Don't Forget I Love You
by mumblybee
Summary: AU. Roxas wakes up on the sidewalk covered in bruises and can't remember anything. Luckily for him, Axel has a penchant for taking in strays. Axel also has a penchant for insanity, but we'll get to that later. Domesticity and angst and humor, oh my!
1. Chapter One: Technical Difficulties

Roxas woke up on some suburban street, its street lamps and house lights quietly fighting darkness to illuminate the long stretch of sidewalk that he was lying on. He was on his back and he could just barely see the stars, shining dimly through a mess of clouds and light pollution. They mesmerized him for a little while, until he began to feel the cold through his thin t-shirt and torn up jeans, until he became aware of a strange pain around his left eye that was steadily throbbing.

He touched his face and winced; there were little stinging pains too, all across his cheeks, like he'd fallen face first into a bunch of gravel. He waited for something to come to him, some recollection that would explain everything. But it didn't. Not even a fragment of memory. There was nothing.

Roxas rested his palm against his left eye for a moment, listening to his own breathing and wondering why it was so ragged. He tried to stand. 

* * *

A quarter of a mile down the street, Axel was in the kitchen having yet another argument with his cat.

"What the hell, Finster!" Axel yelled, brandishing an empty, clawed up cat food bag at a large orange tabby cat sitting on the table. "I leave you alone for ten minutes and you eat the whole damn thing? I did not raise you to behave this way!"

The cat licked his paw, purring.

"Don't you purr at me! Look at your poor starving brother and sister!" Axel cried, pointing dramatically toward the kitchen entrance, where two black and white spotted cats were looking in curiously. "How are they supposed to live like this? You're a monster, Finster! A_ monster!_"

Finster was apparently okay with that. He curled up on the table and closed his eyes, the very picture of contentment.

Axel lowered the cat food bag and sighed, reluctantly accepting the lost cause that was his eldest child – um, cat. "Fine. I'll go out and buy more. But don't you think you're getting any breakfast tomorrow, you selfish bastard."

Grumbling nonsensically to himself, he shoved on his winter boots, tore his coat from the back of a kitchen chair, and stomped out into the cold night. 

* * *

Roxas had quickly realized that his legs were not all that eager to support him. They wavered and trembled when he took the first step, and he was only able to take the second by hanging onto a street lamp. Slowly, though, he let them get used to carrying his weight and he was able to move forward a few stiff, aching steps at a time, grabbing onto whatever was in reach – lamp posts, trees, a fire hydrant – to keep going.

Going where? he wondered, but it didn't seem to matter very much. His feet had pointed him in this direction and with nothing else to trust, he relied on them to guide him.

Unfortunately they guided him straight into a tree.

A tree that yelped like a kicked dog and took a giant leap backward when he stepped on its –

Foot?

"Jesus Christ!" yelled the not-tree, hopping up and down and clutching its leg.

Roxas blinked against the darkness and made out the figure of a person – a ridiculously tall person with long, spindly legs. And also ridiculously tall hair. Which made him look suspiciously like a tree.

"Oh," he said, realization dawning. His voice came out all dry and croaky for some reason, like he had a cough. "Sorry…"

The tall guy stopped growl-mumbling to himself – something about "goddamn fucking cats" – and looked in Roxas's direction as though he had just noticed him there. The soft glow of the lamp post above them illuminated the guy's eyes, which were a bright, oddly intense green. Roxas was so startled by the weird energy of their gaze that he nearly took a step backward. He couldn't help it. He felt disturbingly like he was being x-rayed, dissected piece by piece in that green stare. 

* * *

Axel had been ready to murder whoever it was who'd so thoroughly smashed his toes. Seriously ready to murder. In fact he'd been on the verge of unleashing a tirade of rage so potent that the words themselves may have killed the poor inconsiderate soul standing before him.

But then the poor inconsiderate soul spoke. "Sorry," he said in the gentlest, sad-puppy-est voice that Axel had ever heard in his life.

Just one word. Two syllables. That was all it took for Axel to feel a bizarre, impulsive desire to take a complete stranger home and feed him soup.

And that was _before_ he saw the bruises.

"Jesus Christ," he said again, in shock this time rather than anger. The kid – he looked around sixteen – was blond-haired and pale as hell, a trait that was accentuated by the fact that the skin all around his left eye was badly swollen and dark purple. There were other, less severe bruises on his chin and his right cheek. And the scattered cuts that went from the bridge of his nose to his left jawline made it look like somebody had chucked him into a pit full of broken glass. "What the hell happened to you?"

The boy blinked his overlarge blue eyes owlishly, like he was confused at being addressed directly. For a moment Axel thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he reached up to touch the left side of his face and said, quite thoughtfully, "I don't know."

Axel blinked back at him, mirroring his bafflement. "You got anybody to call? Somebody to come get you?" he asked, eyeing the kid's tattered t-shirt and torn up jeans.

The kid bit his lip, furrowing his brow. "I don't know," he said again, sounding frustrated this time.

Axel waited but he didn't say anything else, just continued to gaze calmly at Axel as though he were a mildly intriguing piece of artwork.

"Okaaay," Axel said slowly, beginning to suspect that the kid might be slightly…off. "So tell me, kid, what _do_ you know?"

"My name's Roxas," the kid responded right away, seeming relieved to be able to relay some sort of, y'know, actual information. "And I'm not a kid. I'm nineteen." There was the barest hint of a spark of anger in his voice there, and Axel quirked an eyebrow.

"Mmhmm. Okay. I can work with that. What else?" he asked.

And then Roxas looked at Axel with fear in his eyes, pure and simple, and Axel found himself suddenly fighting the _very _strong, _very _insane desire to feed him all the soup in the entire world. And maybe buy him a pony for good measure.

"That's all," Roxas said, his voice gone quiet and hollow.

"Do you need a place to stay?" Axel blurted out. 

* * *

Roxas stared, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest like it wanted to break through his ribs. "I…"

He stopped. Sure, the guy standing in front of him was a billion feet tall with bright red porcupine hair and creepily intense green eyes. But in those eyes there seemed to be actual, genuine concern. And somehow, for some reason that didn't quite make sense and had more to do with a gut feeling than any logic, Roxas trusted not-tree-guy.

"I don't have anywhere else to go," Roxas said, which was neither a yes nor a no, technically, and for some reason this made him feel better about the whole thing.

The guy nodded, a small smile tugging the corners of his lips upward. "Cool. My house is literally like ten yards away and I have a guest bedroom. You can hang out there till you figure stuff out if you want."

Roxas nodded slowly. "What's your name?" he asked. It had suddenly occurred to him that this would probably be a good piece of information to know.

"The name's Axel. Make sure you remember that much at least," Axel said, flashing him a grin.

Roxas felt himself smile back, and it felt weird, but kind of in a good way.

"This way," Axel said, and he reached out to take Roxas's hand, leading him slowly along down the sidewalk. Every step ached – not in just his legs but in his chest and his head too. Axel kept up a steady stream of helpfully distracting chatter.

"I hope you're not allergic to cats, 'cause I've got three of them," he said. "Don't ask how they find me. They just kinda show up on the street or in my front yard or in the newspaper classifieds and I can't just leave them there, you know? My friend Namine says I'm nuts but I mean, how could you leave a little kitten out there in the cold, right? She's not much of a cat person though." Axel paused, then added thoughtfully, "Although to actually be a _cat person_ I guess she'd have to have fur and whiskers and stuff."

"I…um…I like cats," Roxas said hesitantly as they reached the house. It was your average, small suburban home – yellow paneling and dark blue shutters, two stories with a picture window in the front…complete with a little front yard and an actual honest-to-god white picket fence. He stared at it, feeling a slight dizziness and something else, something oddly like loss.

"Awesome, 'cause there's cat hair everywhere," said Axel brightly, turning around and reaching out to help Roxas up the front steps.

Roxas took exactly half a step before the world started to shake – and then all at once it was crashing in around him.

"Ax…" he managed, and collapsed forward. 

* * *

"Roxas!" Axel lunged to catch him by the shoulders. "Roxas?" he repeated, panicking. "You okay?"

But the kid was out cold, slumped forward against Axel.

Axel gazed at him under the house light for a moment, at the swollen black eye, at the scattered cuts, at the disheveled blond hair that fell across his forehead in every direction.

Soup, he thought. Lots and lots of soup.

Sighing, he shifted Roxas into his arms and carried him into the house.

Of course Moo and Cow were immediately weaving in and out of his legs, mewling piteously. "Sorry guys," he whispered, carrying Roxas down the hall to the guest room. "Unexpected technical difficulties."

He settled Roxas down on the bed as gently as he could and paused, frowning at the kid's dirty clothes. Nothing to be done about those till the kid woke up. He pulled a blanket up over Roxas and stood there awkwardly for a moment, feeling oddly inadequate.

"Well…um…don't let the bed bugs bite. Or something," Axel whispered at last, and went to find the cats a can of tuna. 

* * *

And thus ends chapter one. Thank you for reading and maybe hopefully reviewing! Sorry about spacing; I cannot figure it out and it's RUINING MY LIFE. Anyway, stay tuned for chapter two, in which Axel makes pancakes and Namine learns that Axel has adopted a random hobo!


	2. Chapter Two: Pancakes Matter

Notes: Hello and thank you for all of the kind reviews; they make me happy when skies are gray (and also when finals are feasting on my soul)! Anyway, enjoy Chapter Two!

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"So anyway, I was hoping you could come talk to him or something, give your expert assessment or whatever," Axel said as the first rays of sunlight came streaming through the window to assault his eyes. He was sitting at the kitchen table, his cell phone in one hand and a ridiculously huge coffee mug in the other.

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

"So basically," Namine sighed at last, "you're telling me there's a hobo living in your guest room."

"What? No, of course not!" Axel said. He paused. "Well… Yes. Sort of."

"Sort of? _Sort of_, Axel?" Namine repeated, and he hurried to cut off her Very Big Important Lecture before it was too late.

"Look, you didn't see him! He needed help! How was I supposed to just leave him out there in the cold?"

"You could have called the police," Namine pointed out. "Though you'd run the risk of being arrested for being a complete lunatic."

"He was scared and alone and hurt!" Axel continued as though he hadn't heard.

Namine sighed heavily over the phone. "Axel," she said patiently, "this is not another stray kitten. This is a _human being_. You can't keep a human being in your guest room."

"I'm not _keeping_ him anywhere," Axel said, glancing nervously toward the closed guest room door. "I'm just giving him a place to stay for a while."

"Do you even know a thing about this kid? About where he came from?"

Axel hesitated. "I told you, he said he didn't remember."

"Oh, well _that's_ comforting," Namine said dryly. "How do you know he's not a wanted murderer or in a gang or something?"

"He's not," said Axel.

"You don't know that."

"I do."

"Oh, really. How?"

Axel hesitated. "Look," he said at last, "I don't know what happened to him or where he came from, but he seems harmless enough. I have an extra room and he needs a place to stay, so why the hell not?"

Namine gave yet another sigh and he could just picture her running a hand through her hair the way she did when she was irritated with him. "Axel, there are so many reasons why not."

"There always are," Axel replied, gazing again toward the guest room door.

There was another pause.

"Fine," Namine said. "I'll come talk to him when I'm back in town, but till then, would you please be careful about what you bring home off the streets?"

"He was on the sidewalk."

"Whatever."

"Thanks, Namine!" Axel said cheerily.

"Don't do anything stupid…er," she replied before hanging up.

"I won't," Axel told the quiet kitchen. He let the phone slip through his fingers and fall to the table, staring into his coffee mug as though it held the answers to the unsettling questions that kept digging their claws into him. For example, why the hell a kid would be out on the sidewalk in the middle of the night, covered in bruises. He frowned, drumming his fingers on the table, then stood abruptly.

"Something not stupid, something not stupid," he muttered, looking around. His eyes fell upon the frying pan sitting in the dish rack. "Oh! I know! Pancakes!"

"Do you talk to yourself a lot?" asked a soft, tired voice.

Axel turned to see Roxas standing there in the kitchen entrance, barefoot and bleary-eyed. His hair was even more disheveled than it had been last night, which Axel wouldn't have believed was possible if he wasn't seeing it right now.

"Of course," he replied with an easy grin. "Only about pancakes, though. All other topics just aren't worth the effort."

"Obviously," Roxas nodded, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets and tilting his head slightly to the side as he gazed around the kitchen.

"Feel free to sit," Axel said, turning and rummaging through the cabinets. "You like pancakes?"

Roxas remained standing. "I don't know. Last time I had those was years and years ago," he said.

Axel paused, glancing back with a spatula in one hand and a box of pancake mix in the other. "So you remember now?"

"No," Roxas replied after a moment, and Axel glanced at him to see that he was rubbing his forehead in apparent frustration. "Just stupid things like that. Things I like and things I don't like. Nothing that makes any – nothing that matters."

"Don't say that," Axel admonished as he poured the pancake mix into a bowl, and grinned again when Roxas looked at him in puzzlement. "Pancakes matter. Now sit down, will you? I'm making breakfast."

Roxas sat slowly in the chair farthest from Axel, eyeing him like a wary deer.

"It's okay, you know," Axel said as he stirred milk into the powdered mix. "You don't seem like a murderer or a gang member. It's cool if you wanna stay for a while."

"You don't even know who I am," Roxas said after a moment's silence. "_I _don't even know who I am."

"'Course I do. You're Roxas," Axel said, and began to pour a little of the pancake batter into the frying pan.

He felt Roxas's eyes on his back as he cooked, but the kid didn't say anything else. Not until Axel set a glass of orange juice and a plate of eight syrup-drenched pancakes in front of him.

"That's – that's a lot," Roxas said.

Axel shrugged as he sat down next to him with his own plate. "Yeah, well, you look hungry. And years and years is a long time to go without any pancakes."

Roxas gazed at him uncertainly as Axel handed him a fork.

"Seriously. Eat," Axel said.

The kid looked like he wanted to argue, but hunger seemed to get the better of him because he turned to his pancakes instead, taking a tentative forkful and chewing slowly. "S'good," he said, blinking at Axel.

"Yeah, I make awesome pancakes," Axel agreed.

Roxas didn't say anything, just kept shoveling the food into his mouth like he hadn't eaten for days. For all Axel knew, he hadn't. In less than five minutes he'd finished the entire stack and was licking the syrup off of his fork like he was afraid he'd never eat again. Axel watched curiously out of the corner of his eye. He started to ask something but closed his mouth, changing his mind. The kid would talk when he was ready.

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At any moment, Roxas thought, Axel was going to start interrogating him again. But he never did. Once they were both done eating he disappeared for a moment, only to come back and shove a stack of three different shirts and pairs of pants into Roxas's arms.

"Bathroom's around the corner, first door on the left. The shower takes a while to heat up," Axel said, pointing toward the hallway.

"Um," said Roxas, trying to see Axel's face over the pile of clothes in his arms.

"Or you don't have to shower if you don't want to," Axel said quickly. "Just change out of those clothes so I can burn them before they infect the whole house with some horrific disease."

Roxas swallowed and nodded as far as the stack of clothing would allow. "Thanks," he said thickly.

"No big deal," Axel said as he took both of their pancake plates to the sink. "I'll be upstairs. Yell or make bird noises or something if you need anything."

"Bird noises?" Roxas repeated, furrowing his brow.

"Like, you know…_kakaaaaaawww!_" Axel explained, flapping his arms.

Roxas stared.

"Fine. Make elephant noises. Or coyote noises. Or unicorn noises. Whatever you want," Axel said with a dismissive wave of his hand, turning to walk away.

"You –" Roxas stopped and shook his head.

Axel glanced over his shoulder. "What about me?"

"You're kinda weird," Roxas said.

"Oh. Is it the hair?" Axel replied, running a hand through his crimson spikes and affecting a look of false concern as though he had heard this a thousand times before.

"No," said Roxas, "The bird noises, mostly."

"Ah." Axel shrugged. "Sorry. Can't be helped."

And with that he turned around the corner and disappeared, leaving Roxas to wonder what the hell was wrong with his host.

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It wasn't easy, but Roxas managed not to look in the bathroom mirror almost the entire time that he was showering and changing clothes – he was afraid to see what his face looked like, the way it ached and throbbed. And the rest of him didn't feel so great either. His legs were sore like he'd been running all night and every drop of water seemed to awaken a twinge of pain wherever it hit his skin.

He was pulling a Beatles t-shirt (which was approximately ten hundred million sizes too big for him) over his head when it happened – a flash of blue caught his eye and he stopped with his arms not yet through the sleeves, staring at his own reflection.

"Shit," he whispered, transfixed by the deep, purplish black ring around his left eye and the jagged, newly-healed cuts scattered across one side of his face. A wave of dizziness caught him in the stomach and he grabbed hold of the sink to stay standing, blinking hard at the mirror, but the image didn't change no matter how much he willed it to.

Seized by a sudden surge of frustration, he raised his fist and brought it crashing toward the glass.

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"What d'you think, Fin?" Axel asked, leaning back in his rolling chair and staring at the canvas, paintbrush in one hand and a fresh mug of coffee in the other. It felt kind of weird to be in his studio again; he hadn't been here in weeks. Maybe months. He couldn't remember. Time was funny that way.

Finster, sprawled out across Axel's lap, opened his eyes halfway and purred.

"Hmm. I appreciate the support, but I don't know if I like this one," Axel replied. He frowned at the canvas and set his coffee mug down on the desk beside him. "Too much…blue."

In fact the entire painting was in shades of blue. It was a simple city scene, a cramped little side street overshadowed by hulking buildings. A small figure, the only sign of life in the painting, stood staring up at the clouded sky as though lost.

"A little too obvious, don't you think?" Axel muttered. "Namine would have a field day with this one." His grip tightened on the paintbrush and he resisted the impulse to chuck it at the wall. Instead he dipped it in black paint and slowly dragged it across the canvas, moving down and then up and then down again, until the image was gone, replaced by a mess of black and blue.

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At the last second Roxas opened his hand, stopping just in time to prevent himself from shattering the mirror. He pressed his palm against the cool glass and stared into his own eyes, trying to find comprehension where he knew there was none.

"Shit," he repeated. "_Shit._" He let his hand slip down from the mirror and turned away, unable to look any longer. His head pounded and he grit his teeth against it. He needed to go. Needed to get out. Didn't matter where, just needed to go.

Moving almost mechanically, he shoved his arms through the sleeves of the t-shirt and tied the drawstring of Axel's baggy sweatpants tight. His shoes were in the bedroom.

He walked stiffly, zombie-like, to the guest room, careful to be as quiet as possible. As soon as his shoes were shoved onto his feet he headed for the front door.

Roxas paused. For some reason he half-expected someone to stop him, but Axel must have been upstairs still and Roxas wasn't about to make any bird noises to draw him down. The only "people" around were two black and white cats, sitting a few feet away and watching him curiously.

"See you," he whispered to them, and walked out the door.

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Notes: Thank you for reading! Stay tuned for Chapter Three, in which Axel parks illegally and Roxas gets psychoanalyzed. Maybe. Also, soup.


	3. Chapter Three: Axel Sucks At MarioKart

Welcome to Chapter Three! Please buckle your seat belts and hang on for dear life – er…I mean, enjoy the ride.

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He walked as though he knew where he was going, moving as fast as his sore muscles would allow. But there was no one out on the street to prove his fake confidence to, no one but him walking down the long stretch of sidewalk, which looked different in the daylight. More foreign, somehow. At night the world had been smaller, simpler, just little glowing islands of sidewalk beneath the street lamps, bridged by darkness. Now there was color and light everywhere and even without the people it was overwhelming.

There were probably no people, he thought as he reached the end of the street and turned right on a whim, because the temperature had to be at least a bazillion degrees below zero. Roxas crossed his arms and pressed them tight against his body, trying to fend off the chill that shook him to the bone. Why hadn't he grabbed a coat? Because that would have been stealing, he reminded himself, and he had already pretty much stolen a t-shirt and a pair of sweat pants from Axel.

Still, though. What kind of idiot goes out into the January night without a freaking coat?

January, Roxas realized, and nearly stopped walking. It was January. Did that mean anything important?

He took another right turn, this time more hesitant. The cold seared his skin and he could no longer keep himself from shaking. He realized with vague unease that he must have passed the place where he had woken up last night. It was closer to Axel's house than this, he was sure of that – but he had no idea where exactly it was.

In fact he had no idea where exactly anything was but that was okay. Maybe. Sort of. No…no, probably not…

Roxas stopped walking abruptly and stared straight ahead of him. A small town slowly unfolded from amongst the suburbs, replacing houses with little shops. Park benches and the occasional statue appeared on the sidewalk. There were people here – not many, but a few, and it made Roxas feel better, less lonely somehow, to see them walking briskly past or darting out of the cold into a café or a grocery store.

He watched longingly as a young couple emerged from the café up ahead, holding coffee cups and each other's hands with equal reverence. Coffee sounded fantastic right about now. He imagined going into the café and demanding a cappucino in the largest size they had, then bolting out the door with it before they could ask for any cash.

Instead Roxas walked on, past the café, past a little Italian restaurant, past an antique shop and a portrait gallery and a book shop. The quaintness of the town struck him hard and he found it almost painful to see, like it was mocking him with its scenes of old timey perfection.

Finally, when his head started to spin and his legs started to waver, he sank down on one of the stupid quaint benches and rested his head back against the stupid quaint brick building that the stupid quaint bench stood in front of.

Staring up at the gray-white sky furrowed by clouds, Roxas was overcome by a strange, empty sense of calm. He closed his eyes.

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To say that Axel was worried when he came downstairs to find Roxas missing was not entirely accurate.

Actually, he was freaking the hell out.

Freaking the hell out, for Axel, involving pacing very quickly in small, tight circles, waving his arms around frenetically and repeating, "What am I going to do, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?" while also attempting to light matches because lighting matches calmed him down. ("No, you're not a pyro," Namine had told him when he'd asked, "you're just frickin' _weird._") Unfortunately lighting matches while freaking out this much was pretty difficult to do without burning himself or the house down and so he just kept picking up the box of matches and then putting it back down again.

Finally he stopped short and with a jerk of his hand chucked the matches at the wall. "What the hell is wrong with me?" he muttered.

"Roowww," said Cow, and Axel looked over to see the black and white splotched cat – the most laidback and also the slowest of his feline trio in more ways than one – sitting on the kitchen table. His front paws were directly on top of Axel's cell phone.

"Geddoff," Axel said, shooing him away.

"Rooowwwllll," Cow complained, but he leapt down. Axel snatched the cell phone and flipped it open to hit speed dial number one.

"Please enjoy the music while your party is being reached," said the slightly creepy fake-phone-lady voice, which was immediately followed by Lady Gaga singing "Bad Romance" entirely too loudly into Axel's ear. He twitched and held the phone a few inches away. Just when he thought he couldn't stand it any longer, Namine answered.

"What, Axel?" she snapped. "I'm having brunch with Kairi, I don't really have time for your neuroses at the mo –"

"He's gone," Axel interrupted, uncomfortably aware of the frantic tone that his voice had taken on.

"Who's gone?" Namine asked after a pause. "The homeless kid?"

"Homeless kid?" he heard Kairi ask in the background.

"Yes, the _homeless kid._ His _name_ is Roxas," Axel snapped. "And he's gone, Namine, and I don't know what to do, I only left him for like a half hour, he was taking a shower and I was in the studio –"

"Wait, you were in the studio?" Namine interrupted, sounding surprised. "You were painting?"

"Yeah, which is not a big _deal _seeing as I'm a goddamn painter," Axel said impatiently. "Anyway that's not –"

"But that's great! You haven't painted in ages! The last time you painted was the annivers–"

"That's not important," Axel cut her off, ignoring the little lurch his heart gave in his chest. "Roxas is _gone_, and I don't know where the hell he went, and it's like two degrees out and he didn't have a coat and what if he freezes out there, Namine, what am I supposed to do?"

"Axel," said Namine, "please, for the love of god, stop sounding like you're this guy's mother. You've known him for a grand total of what, a couple of hours? Maybe he just remembered something about where he came from and he decided to go back. Or maybe he just felt like going for a walk."

"But Namine," Axel said plaintively, "he doesn't even know where he is. And it's _cold._"

"Then I don't know, Axel, why don't you go and find him if it's such a huge deal," Namine said with a short sigh that meant she was exasperated with him and thought he was overreacting as usual.

Axel blinked. "Yeah," he said, "Yeah, I'll find him!" And he hung up, ignoring Namine's protestation of, "Wait!" and running to the car, still in his slippers.

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Something wet and cold fell onto Roxas's cheek and he started, reaching a hand toward his face and opening his eyes to his surroundings.

It was snowing. The sidewalk was already lined with a thin layer of white. How had he not noticed this? Had he been asleep? It didn't feel like he'd been sleeping, just sitting here with his eyes closed, listening to shop doors opening and closing and trying not to think too much.

Roxas reached up and ran a hand through his hair, shaking out snow melt. He let out a soft exhale that was meant to be a laugh but didn't quite make it there, and watched the snow fall in wonder. He'd seen this a hundred times before, so why – why did it amaze him every single time? Maybe it was the way it looked like little pieces of cloud coming down to land for a while, or the inexplicable feeling it gave off of something special. Maybe it wasn't anything. Maybe –

SCREEEEEEEEEECH.

Roxas jumped and knocked his head against the wall of the building behind him. "What the hell –?" he started, then stopped abruptly.

A beaten up old blue station wagon, the only car on the road, had just made an extremely illegal turn across from the other side of the street and was now _hurtling straight toward him._ Roxas gave a yelp and leapt backward up against the wall, palms pressed to the brick, heart hammering in his chest. The car flew halfway up onto the sidewalk with a CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRASH and mercifully came to halt before murdering Roxas where he stood.

Roxas watched, wide-eyed and shaking like a cornered rabbit, as the driver's side door was flung open to reveal –

"A-Axel?" Roxas said weakly.

Axel, still dressed in pajama pants and slippers, looked utterly unfazed by the fact that he had just nearly killed them both. In fact he looked – _happy?_

"Roxas!" he said, taking a few bounding strides toward him. "Oh – shit, did I scare you? Sorry, I didn't mean to aim for you or anything! I came downstairs and you were gone so I was just driving around looking for you and then I saw you, so – you know –"

"So you did _this? _You couldn't have just _parked?_" Roxas said in a higher pitched, more hysterical voice than usual.

"I guess. I just kinda saw you and reacted," Axel said with a shrug, frowning as though a little confused as to what the problem was. Following Roxas's gaze to the slightly smoking car, he added, "Oh, don't worry, Bessie'll be fine to take us home. She's been through way worse."

"T-take us home?" Roxas repeated faintly.

Axel looked at him with definite confusion this time. "Well, yeah. It's cold out here."

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Later Roxas would wonder what it was that had inspired him to get into a rattling death trap of a car with someone who had just proven himself to be completely insane. Part of it was the fact that it _was_ really freaking cold, and part of it was the way Axel was looking at him, like he understood how Roxas felt (how could he though?) and wanted to help (but why?).

Mostly, though, it was because as much as Axel's behavior made him nervous, that was nothing compared to how scared and goddamn _lost _he had felt, being out in the world by himself. It was as though his body only knew how to be afraid – he couldn't stop tensing at every little sound.

He gazed out the windshield at the tunnel of snowflakes ahead of them, thankful that despite Bessie's resolute clanking and newly dented bumper, the old station wagon's heat worked just fine.

"I really didn't mean to scare you," Axel said suddenly. Roxas looked at him in surprise, but he just stared ahead at the road. "I can be a little impulsive."

Roxas nearly choked on an incredulous laugh. "A little?"

Axel didn't turn away from the road but he smiled. "Maybe more than a little," he conceded.

The car went quiet again, besides the clanking.

"Axel," Roxas said hesitantly as they turned onto Axel's street, "why did you come find me?"

Axel glanced at him now in surprise. "You said you didn't have anywhere to go. And you didn't take a coat with you. I didn't want you to get hypothermia and die or something."

They pulled into the driveway. Axel turned the car off and unclicked his seat belt, but Roxas just sat there staring at the dashboard.

"But why do you_ care?_" he asked, very quietly.

Axel paused and looked directly at him, and Roxas was drawn to those weirdly bright green eyes as if they had a magnetic pull on him. There was a shadow across Axel's face that Roxas couldn't quite decipher. "I don't know," Axel said with a too-casual shrug. "Why not?"

Roxas blinked and followed Axel out of the car in silence. He couldn't think of any suitable answer to that.

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"Here," Axel said, handing Roxas a bowl. "You look like you could use some soup."

Roxas, huddled up on Axel's couch beneath possibly every single blanket Axel owned, took the bowl in his hands gratefully and set about devouring its contents. Finster, Moo, and Cow were curled up beside him, crowding him like he was the new kid at school or something. As soon as he was done with the soup Axel was back with a pot and ladle.

"Thanks," Roxas said, "but I think I'm good for now."

"You're still shaking," Axel said, eyeing the kid's trembling fingers.

"Only a little," Roxas muttered, tightening his grip on his spoon.

"Just humor me and eat a little more."

"Fine," Roxas sighed, the very picture of a reluctant teenager, and held the bowl out while Axel filled it again. "I still don't get why you care so much," he muttered between spoonfuls.

Axel set the pot of soup down on the coffee table and sat down at the other end of the couch, sighing and putting his feet up on the table too. "If you found somebody who needed help, wouldn't you help them?" he asked.

"Well," Roxas said, swallowing another spoonful, "I guess. Yeah. But you're acting like you're my – my parent or something with the pancakes and the soup and the…um…car…"

Axel laughed and shrugged. "Sorry. I have this problem with strays. Isa used to say -"

He stopped abruptly, the laughter falling from his face. What the hell? He hadn't spoken that name aloud to anybody in at least three years – anybody but Namine of course.

The painting…the blue…maybe that's what had brought that name back to his lips. That had to be it. Axel shook his head as though to clear it, then noticed Roxas's puzzled gaze. He forced a not-very-convincing smile. "Isa used to say," he started again – he'd said it now, no reason to hide it – "that I was a bleeding heart for taking home every stray dog or cat I found. He kept complaining that I was turning his house into an animal shelter."

Axel leaned forward and took the pot and ladle, sipping some soup for something to do. He could feel Roxas studying him. The kid's wide blue eyes had this oddly disarming quality to them, like they were continually taking the world apart and putting it back together again.

"Who's Isa?" Roxas asked after a pause, setting down his own bowl.

Axel swallowed a mouthful of soup. It burned going down. "Somebody I knew," he said, then met Roxas's gaze and elaborated. "Somebody I used to live with."

Roxas looked around in puzzlement as though Isa might pop up out of the floorboards. "Did he move or something?"

"He died," Axel said shortly, with a tight smile.

"Oh," Roxas said, looking away.

Thankfully Axel's phone chose that moment to let out a loud BZZZZZT from the kitchen table where he'd left it earlier.

"It's probably Namine," he said, jumping suddenly to his feet and causing the cats to scatter in alarm. He ignored them as all three gave him highly offended looks and ran to get the phone, then flopped back down on the couch. This was apparently the last straw for the cats, who leapt down and stalked off, one after the other, in a rare show of unity. Probably to go sleep in the studio where it was warmer anyway.

"Bye Moo, 'bye Cow, 'bye Finster," Axel muttered on reflex as they passed him one by one, and went to his messages folder. "Oh jeez." He blinked at the screen. There were six new messages, five from Namine and one from Demyx, which read "yo dude wanna play gitar heero 2dai?" Axel rolled his eyes as he deleted it, moving on to the messages that actually mattered.

**10:02 am: wtf axel. **

**10:12 am: What happnd?**

**10:33 am: Did u crash ur car again?**

**10:41 am: AXEL ANSWER ME**

**10:50 am: i swear i am going 2 kill u**

Axel scratched his head. "Oops," he muttered, and texted a quick reply.

**To: Namine. 11:03 am. its cool! i found him. bessies fine. dont worry. ttyl.**

He glanced back over at Roxas, who was fiddling with the frayed edges of a blanket and still looking determinedly away from him.

"Hey," Axel said.

Roxas glanced at him apprehensively, like he thought Axel was going to start talking about dead people again. "Yeah?"

"You wanna play MarioKart?"

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"Mario…Kart?" Roxas repeated, furrowing his brow. He was still trying to digest the information he'd just learned. "I don't…I don't know what that is."

Axel stared at him with such bewilderment that it was as if Roxas had just declared that he didn't know what the sun was. "You don't know MarioKart? _Seriously?_"

"I told you before, I don't remember anything but the basics," Roxas said, beginning to get a little frustrated.

Axel nodded. "Right. Okay. Well, it's a video game. Do you know what those are?"

"Yeah," Roxas said. Duh, he thought.

This answer seemed to temporarily derail Axel. "How can you know what video games are and not know what MarioKart is?" he demanded.

"_Basics_, remember?" Roxas reminded him.

"Yeah. Sorry. Okay," Axel said, still looking a little stunned. "So it's this race car game. Each player has a controller and they control their own car, and…you try to beat everybody else to the finish line. That's it."

"Sounds kinda boring," Roxas couldn't help admitting.

Axel grinned. "Oh, you'll see. Just you wait. You'll see."

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About an hour or so later Roxas found himself engaged in an epic race down Rainbow Road, trying desperately to avoid Axel, who kept trying to ram him off the road.

"Not fair!" he protested when Axel's Bowser car succeeded in sending Yoshi flying through the air.

Axel grinned. "I never said this game was fair."

Roxas scowled. "I just learned how to play like ten seconds ago and you're already trying to kill me!"

"So fight back," Axel shrugged.

Roxas said nothing to that, just narrowed his eyes and waited for Yoshi to be retrieved from wherever the hell it was that the weird dinosaur thingy had fallen. Once he was back on the road he zoomed as fast the stupid little car would go toward Axel's car, slamming right into him and knocking them both off of the road this time.

"Hey!" Axel said, looking at him in surprise.

Roxas just shot him a glare. "You said to fight back."

Axel blinked at him for a moment, then laughed. "So I did. You have learned well, grasshopper."

Roxas stared blankly at him.

"Don't worry about it," Axel said hastily. "Pop culture reference."

"Oh," Roxas replied, and turned back to the television screen, resuming his efforts to crash repeatedly into Axel's car.

"You know, the idea of this game is that you're supposed to win the race," Axel said conversationally after Roxas had thrown him off the road – sometimes sacrificing his own Yoshi car to do so – about five more times.

"This is more fun," Roxas replied. "Besides, I _am_ winning."

"No you're –" Axel stopped and glanced at the part of the screen that counted how many laps they had gone. "Oh. Shit. You're a lap ahead."

"Yep," Roxas said happily, feeling quite proud of himself. He'd succeeded in distracting Axel with the bumper cars thing so well that Axel hadn't even noticed who exactly was in the lead.

Axel frowned and stared at the screen intently, clearly putting all his effort into beating Roxas, who redoubled his own efforts. He managed to avoid several more attempts on Yoshi's life, though he did fall off the road several more times as well. So he just did his best to take Axel out with him.

Finally Roxas went zooming past the finish line and the little "winner!" graphic came onto the screen. He grinned. "Yes!"

Axel groaned and tossed his controller to the side. "Dammit!"

"Again?" Roxas said eagerly, looking at him.

"Eh, why not," Axel answered with a shrug. "Nothing better to do."

"But don't you have a job or something?" Roxas asked as Axel went back to the menu to select another race for them to play.

"Yeah, I'm a freelance artist. I do magazine illustrations and stuff," Axel answered absentmindedly as he selected his player – Luigi this time.

"How old are you?" Roxas asked curiously as he chose Yoshi again for himself.

"A year old than you," Axel replied, apparently unperturbed by the bluntness of the question. "Twenty."

That was younger than Roxas had thought, somehow. Maybe because of the way Axel had been acting – like a parent, not like a…a regular person. "Did you go to college?"

"I started it. College wasn't really my thing. Met Namine there though and she's like my best friend now, so it wasn't a total waste."

"1…2…3…GO!" said the screen. They fell silent as they raced each other through some weird jungley thing that Axel had said earlier was from "Donkey Kong", whatever the hell that was. A few minutes and a lot of turtle shells and banana peels later, Roxas was once again the winner.

"How the hell did you get so good at this so fast?" Axel asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

Roxas shrugged. "Dunno."

Axel gave him a suspicious look. "You sure you haven't played before?"

Roxas paused. "Dunno," he repeated, lips twisting in a bitter smile.

"Guess not, huh?" Axel said casually as he selected a new race track for them to play. Like it wasn't important, that Roxas couldn't even remember whether or not he'd ever played a stupid video game.

And suddenly Roxas had a strange thought, an insane thought, an amazing thought. Maybe it _didn't _matter. Maybe it _wasn't _important. Not right now.

Roxas gripped the controller tight in his hands. "I'm going to win," he warned Axel.

Axel shot him a surprised but amused look. "We'll see about that," he said, and Roxas grinned – actually grinned, so that his bruised face hurt – and waited for the race to start.

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.

.

Axel glanced over at Roxas, sleeping beside him on the couch. The kid had practically passed out around seven o'clock, somewhere between watching _The Lion King_ and _Pirates of the Caribbean_. They'd moved on to movies after Axel got tired of failing at MarioKart.

Somehow Roxas managed to look even smaller and more vulnerable when he was asleep – the bruises didn't help much. It scared Axel for a reason he couldn't totally pinpoint, but he pushed the fear away and stood up, turning the TV off and gazing for a moment longer at Roxas, who was breathing slow and deep and even. He would have been the picture of tranquility except for his hands, which were curled into tight fists around one of the blankets.

Axel rubbed his forehead and sighed, turning his eyes away from the boy whom Isa would have called "_your latest stray puppy." _As he wandered away toward the kitchen his phone let out another, muffled BZZZT in his pocket. He flipped it open.

**so r u keeping him or what? **read the text from Namine.

Running a hand through his hair with a tired smile, Axel tapped out a reply.

**only** **if he stays.**

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Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Unfortunately the psychoanalyzing will have to wait till the next chapter. The next chapter will also include Roxas meeting Namine and Axel proving how horrible he is at shopping trips. Yay.

And remember everyone: Drive safe and avoid launching your car over sidewalks at people you barely know in misguided attempts to rescue them. Do not be a reckless driver. Do not be like Axel.


	4. Chapter Four: I Like You

Notes: Thanks so much for the reviews! Happy holidays, everyone! Or just…um…happy…days…if you're reading this when there aren't any holidays. Well, there's always a holiday somewhere, right? …Maybe. Anyway, enjoy!

EDIT: I fixed that line where Roxas apparently only says "." has crappy formatting, what can I say.

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"Geez, Namine, I cordially let you into my home and so courteously ask you how visiting your cousin was – and you accuse me of kidnapping. Some friend you are," Axel said, lifting his coffee mug to his lips. He was lounging lazily in a kitchen chair propped on its back two legs.

Namine sat across from him, wearing a familiar glare. She was dressed simply but elegantly in a white sweater dress, stockings, and heels, which made Axel feel a little out of place in his Lion King pajama pants.

"I did not accuse you of kidnapping. I asked you how long you plan on keeping the kid," she said. "And why are you drinking coffee? I thought we agreed you shouldn't drink coffee."

"You said, and I quote, 'How long are you keeping him hostage anyway?' And it helps me," Axel said, taking another swig.

"It makes you even more insane," Namine snapped. She grabbed the mug from him as he went to set it down and put it on the chair beside her, out of his reach.

Axel frowned but knew better than to put up a fight. "You're a jerk."

"And you're avoiding the issue."

"Am not."

"_Axel._"

He sighed and dropped his eyes to the kitchen tile, tapping his fingers impatiently against the table. Why did she have to take his coffee? What was he supposed to do with his hands now? If he got up to get more coffee she'd just take that too. Didn't she realize that he just wanted to drink his coffee in peace and ignore her? And why was she talking so loudly? She was going to wake Roxas up and it was only ten o'clock. Roxas usually woke up around eleven. Why would she go and mess with the kid's sleep schedule like that?

Wait, why did he care about that? Axel's fingers paused in the pattern they were tapping against the table, then resumed. Whatever. It didn't matter. If she would just give him back his freaking coffee maybe everything would make a little more sense.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Axel demanded suddenly, lifting his eyes to glare at her. "Separating a man from his caffeine like that?"

Namine stared at him in disbelief. "All that time you were thinking about the _coffee?_ The_ coffee,_ Axel? I thought you were going to say something important!"

Axel shook out his hair and drew himself up to his full sitting height, which was not quite as formidable as his standing height but was nonetheless acceptable under the circumstances (which included morning grogginess and Roxas-induced anxiety). "What could be more important than –"

"What have you been doing for the past week?" Namine interrupted as she stood up and went to the stove, putting on the tea kettle.

Axel thought briefly about coming up with a clever and interesting response to this. "What?" he said instead, watching her retrieve an empty mug from the dish rack.

She sighed. "I mean about the homeless kid."

"His name is _Roxas_," Axel corrected with a flash of irritation. "Roxas. Roxas Roxas Roxas _Roxas_ Roxas –"

"All right, I get it," Namine snapped.

"Good. And I dunno, we've just been playing some video games and going for walks around town and stuff. I got him ice cream the other day; he's totally obsessed with the stuff. Like, would-jump-through-a-flaming-hoop-for-it obsessed. It's really weird. Oh, and we played Scrabble on Tuesday. He beat me. And we went to the café a few times. He likes mocha cappuccinos." Axel noticed the look Namine was giving him and added hurriedly, "And every day we stop at the spot I found him for a while to see if he'll remember anything."

Namine raised an eyebrow skeptically. "And does he?"

"No," Axel admitted, letting the chair fall forward onto all four legs. "But what do you want me to do? There's no way to contact anyone. He doesn't remember any addresses, phone numbers, the names of towns, even what state he lives in. As far as he's aware he doesn't even have a last name. And he's nineteen. It's not like anybody's putting his face on a milk carton."

Namine shrugged as she rummaged through his cabinets and found the box of vanilla chai tea she'd bought him. "You could've taken him to the hospital."

Axel grimaced. "What, and let them toss him into the psych ward? He's already traumatized. He doesn't need to be thrown in with a bunch of nutjobs."

"What's your plan then?" Namine said, leaning back against the kitchen counter as the tea kettle heated up. "What are you going to do, put a lost & found ad in the paper?"

He shrugged. "I figured I'd just wait. He's bound to remember eventually, right?"

For some reason this earned him one of Namine's very special, custom-made, Axel-You-Are-An-Idiot looks.

"What?" he protested. "What's wrong with that?"

"It doesn't work like that," she said, rolling her eyes. "Depending on what caused the memory loss he may _never_ remember. Do you think he's just going to live with you forever if that happens? He's a person, Axel, not a cat."

_"Really?"_ Axel replied, suddenly leaning forward, eyes widening. "Then why does he keep eating the Meow Mix I've been giving him? Must be something to do with that whole memory loss thing…"

"Axel –" Namine interrupted, but he kept talking over her.

"Don't worry, I'll make sure to tell him he's been living a lie. And I guess he doesn't need that litter box in his room anymore…"

"_His _room?"

Axel shot her a glare. "The guest room. Whatever. You make such a big deal out of such stupid crap. You're the reason I hate psych majors."

Namine smiled, turning away toward the softly whistling kettle. "And you're the reason psych majors exist," she replied as she poured the tea. "There," she said, and set the mug in front of him. "That's better."

Axel stared forlornly at the darkening water and tugged a little at the string on the tea bag. "Can't I just –"

"No," Namine said sharply.

"Just a little?"

"No."

"What about some of that instant powdered stuff, the flavored kind that only has like point five percent actual coffee in it?"

"_No_, Axel."

He sighed and lifted the cup in a mock toast. "To debilitating caffeine addiction," he said, and drank.

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Roxas dreamed in broken flashes of images, voices weaving their way in and out and echoing in his ears.

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A woman slept on the floor under a blanket and he was worried because the blanket was thin and it was so cold, always so goddamn cold here and he asked her

_Are you okay, are you okay, are you –_

Flash. A roaring in his ears and rough hands on either side of his neck, someone was yelling and there were strong fingers digging hard into his shoulders, shaking shaking shaking him until he thought he'd break, until someone screamed above the roar

_STOP STOP IT JUST STOP_

and he fell and he stayed down, stayed huddled there because

_I'm scared_ – a whisper – _I'm scared_ –

.

Roxas shot up in bed as though an electric jolt had just gone through him. He looked wildly around the room, breathing short and fast and shallow. Where was he? This was – this was –

"Mew."

He looked down to see Moo staring up at him from the bedside. She purred when he reached down automatically to pet her and his breathing slowed as he felt her soft warmth through his hand.

This was Axel's house. He was in Axel's house. Okay.

He slid his legs over the edge of the mattress and stood up slowly – it no longer hurt to move around, but after a week he was used to taking it easy in deference to the aches and pains all over his body. Moo purred louder and darted toward the closed bedroom door, looking back at him expectantly.

"Oh – yeah, you're probably hungry, huh?" Roxas said, his voice low and kind of croaky from sleep. "Sorry." He hurried to the door. He had no idea why Moo had decided he was her new best friend, but it was kind of nice to have her with him at night. When he couldn't get to sleep he just tried to match his breathing to hers, nice and slow and deep and even, and before long he would drift easily away.

Roxas wandered to the kitchen, Moo trailing him as the fragmented dream slowly slipped from his mind for the moment to be replaced by more important thoughts. Like,_ I'm hungry. _And,_ I need caffeine._ And, _Who the hell is she?_

He stopped short, blinking at a well-dressed young blond woman sitting across from a very dejected looking Axel at the kitchen table. To Roxas's slight alarm, Axel brightened up ridiculously upon catching sight of him.

"Roxas! Help! She's making me drink tea!" he said, waving his arms around wildly as the woman turned around to look at Roxas.

"Why?" said Roxas, not sure exactly whether he was referring to the tea thing or to Axel's weird gesturing.

"Because she's a _monster_," Axel replied at the same time as the woman said, "Because he's hyper enough without the coffee."

Roxas stared. "Are you Namine?" he asked after a pause, remembering the name that Axel kept mentioning.

The blond woman smiled. "Yes. And I assume you're Roxas?"

He nodded warily.

"Nice to meet you," Namine said, and she actually looked like she meant it.

"Don't talk to her, Roxas!" Axel said urgently, green eyes blazing with a mixture of excitement and amusement that Roxas had begun to recognize as a warning sign. "She's a monster! A caffeine-stealing monster!"

Roxas ignored him. "Nice to meet you too," he said, and went to get himself a cup of coffee from the pot Axel must've made earlier.

"Wait, why aren't you stopping him?" he heard Axel protest right away.

"Because he's not a lunatic," Namine replied.

"That you_ know of_," Axel grumbled. "He could be a serial killer."

"I don't think I am," Roxas said mildly as he sat down next to Axel, who stared at Roxas's coffee and gave an odd kind of half-growl, half-whimper noise that made Roxas reconsider his seat.

"So," said Namine, ignoring Axel as he dropped his head to the table in apparent despair, "Axel's told me a lot about you."

Roxas surveyed her above the coffee mug as he brought it to his lips. There was something about the way she was talking to him that set him on edge. "Oh. So he's told you I'm crazy, then," he said.

Axel lifted his head. A few of his red spikes looked a little flattened. "You're not crazy," he said sharply. "Don't say that."

"Oh, sorry, I'm not crazy," Roxas replied, seized by a sudden bitterness. "I just can't remember anything about my life before the past week or so. _Totally_ normal."

Axel sighed and turned to Namine. "Did I tell you about the sarcasm?"

Namine continued to look thoughtfully at Roxas. "I think your problem could be dissociation due to trauma," she said. "More specifically, dissociative fugue."

Both Axel and Roxas looked blankly at her, so she elaborated. "That's when a person basically just runs away and leaves their life behind, forgetting who they are, why they left, everything. I guess you could think of it as like the amnesia you see in the movies, only it was triggered by a traumatic event and not by a baseball bat whacking you in the head or something. Axel told me what condition you were in when he found you. That definitely leads me to believe you've experienced some kind of trauma."

Roxas stared at her, then glanced at Axel, who was now leaning his chin on his hand and frowning at the table. "How do you… how do you know all that?" he asked Namine.

Her smile was almost apologetic. "I'm an art therapist. I have a Master's in psychology."

"Okay," Roxas said after a beat, and took another sip of lukewarm coffee to calm himself (which didn't make sense really, but he didn't care at the moment). "Okay. So if it is disso– that thing – how do I fix it?"

"You can try to trigger memories," Namine answered, watching him. "It's difficult, especially if it's something really painful that your mind is trying to protect you from, so you have to work at it. You could try psychotherapy, or hypnosis…or I could do some art therapy with you if you'd like."

Roxas's heartbeat was thundering in his ears so that he could barely concentrate on what Namine was saying. "Okay," he repeated vaguely, because she had paused as though waiting for a response.

"Okay? So you want to try art therapy?"

"What?" Roxas looked toward Axel for help.

Axel's eyes shifted to gaze at him. "Roxas," he said in a very quiet, very Not-Axel voice. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. I just thought it might help."

Roxas took a deep breath and nodded, trying to slow the panicked stuttering of his heart. What the hell was wrong with him? Why was he scared? He was just sitting in Axel's kitchen. Axel, who despite being utterly unpredictable, had still somehow managed to be one of the only stable forces in Roxas's world since he'd met him. This was stupid. There was no reason for him to feel afraid.

He stood abruptly. "I'm going to go take a shower," he announced, refusing to meet Axel's eyes and walking quickly from the kitchen.

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"You scared him," Axel said, running an agitated hand through his hair as he paced around the kitchen table. He was on about his eighth lap. "Why did you scare him?"

Namine watched calmly from her chair. "I just told him the truth," she said. "I think maybe it's good that he reacted that much. Maybe those memories aren't buried that deep."

Axel frowned but didn't respond, just kept pacing. In the middle of his thirteenth lap he stopped suddenly and turned to Namine. "What if he doesn't _want_ to remember?"

She gave him a look that was a painful mixture of exasperation and pity. "Axel…"

"No, no, hear me out," he told her, waving a hand. "What if he doesn't ever want to remember that stuff, what if it – it's too much? What am I supposed to do then?"

"_You_ don't have to do anything," Namine said, raising her eyebrows. "This is Roxas's problem. Not yours."

"But that's not true!" Axel snapped in frustration. "_I'm _the one who's taking care of him."

Namine's expression changed to concern and he regretted his words immediately. "Why are you so attached to him after just a week?" she asked in a low, worried voice.

"I'm not," Axel said, trying hard to sound calmer than he was. Unfortunately trying hard to sound calm was a pretty solid guarantee that you were not going to sound calm.

Her pale blue eyes searched him. "Do you really think this is good for you, Axel?" she said at last.

"What, letting him stay here? I told you, why not?" he said.

Namine nodded slowly. "Okay. If he suddenly remembered his old life, left you a note and just walked out the door, what would you do?"

Axel frowned at her. "He wouldn't do that. He'd say goodbye."

"But ifhe _did_?"

He stared into his tea for a moment, then let out a frustrated sigh. The steam rising from the mug scattered and dissipated. "Look, I'm just – I feel sorry for him, that's all. He doesn't have anybody else."

"Like you didn't," she said quietly.

The words hung there in the air between them, ugly and heavy. Axel felt the anger boil up toward his throat as he started to say something horrible and stupid, something he knew he was going to regret, something involving Namine's last boyfriend and commitment issues and maybe even hookers for good measure. "You –"

And that was all he got out, thank god, because Roxas chose that moment to shuffle back into the kitchen. Now that Axel was actually looking at him, it was obvious that he looked better, healthier than he had since Axel had found him. Though he still rarely smiled, when he did it came more easily and it lingered longer. The black eye was fading, he moved with less rigidity, and the cuts across his face were healing into faint marks. His blue eyes were clear, having lost the panicked look and the clouds of sleep, and his damp hair glistened gold in the sunlight from the kitchen window. Another of Axel's t-shirts hung from his thin shoulders and he wore a pair of sweatpants so long on him that it was a wonder he could movie in them at all without tripping.

"What are you _wearing?_" Namine asked, so stunned that she completely dropped her concerned-therapist-tone. "Those have to be like _eighty-nine _sizes too big for you."

Roxas looked down at the clothes as though just noticing them. "I don't have anything else to wear," he said with a shrug.

Namine looked appalled, which didn't surprise Axel, as this was the girl whose favorite TV show was called _What Not To Wear_. "You can't just go out into the world in Axel's ratty old clothes!"

"I can't?" Roxas said, looking confused.

"Ratty?" Axel repeated, insulted.

But Namine ignored him. She stood up, grabbed her purse, and announced in true Dictator Namine fashion, "Roxas, I'm buying you a new wardrobe. Let's go."

Roxas just stood there stiffly and blinked those wide blue eyes at her, which Axel had come to learn was not really just an expression of simple puzzlement as he had first assumed. Actually it meant something along the lines of, "I have no freaking idea what the hell you're talking about and you're kind of scaring me. I am now preparing to defend myself. Also I may viciously attack you if you come any closer." (He was only assuming on that last part, but it seemed likely enough if the kid's tendency toward MarioKart violence was any indication.)

"Come on, it's on me," Namine said, and took a step toward Roxas, who continued to eye her warily like she was a dangerous felon.

Axel stepped between the two of them. "_Now_ who's kidnapping?" he said, glaring at Namine.

"Wait, what?" said Roxas behind him. Axel ignored him, focusing on Namine. "Look, can you just leave him alone? If he doesn't feel like shopping he doesn't have to go."

"I'll buy you guys ice cream if you go to the mall with me," Namine responded sweetly. Or evilly. It was a fine line.

Axel snorted. "You think you can bribe –"

"I wanna go," Roxas interrupted from behind him.

"Dammit," Axel muttered. Why had he told her about Roxas's bizarre obsession with ice cream? And who the hell wanted to eat ice cream in the middle of the coldest winter the East Coast had seen in five years anyway?

Roxas, apparently, if the fact that he was now following Namine blithely toward the front door was any indication.

"Hey, wait!" Axel called, bounding after them. "Don't leave without me! I'm coming too!"

"Of course you are," Namine sighed, and paused with her hand on the doorknob just to roll her eyes at him, which he thought was petty on her part. So he stuck his tongue out at her.

"In your pajamas?" asked Roxas, looking him up and down.

Axel looked down at his Simba patterned pajama pants, then back up at Roxas. The small, almost affectionate smile on the kid's lips gave him pause, and he stood there staring for a good three or four seconds before Roxas frowned and furrowed his brow and Axel snapped out of it.

"Um. Yeah. Don't leave without me!" he repeated, and bolted to his room to get dressed.

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Three hours later, Roxas was in possession of two huge bags full of carefully chosen, Namine-approved clothes. He watched from a safe distance as Axel inadvertantly toppled a stack of shoeboxes in the department store. They crashed to the floor and spilled their contents everywhere. Sneakers, heels, boots – no shoe was safe. Axel looked bemusedly around at the mess and appeared to be giving a hasty apology to the angry looking store employee who rushed toward him.

"That's the fourth time he's knocked something over in three stores," Roxas said to Namine, who stood beside him holding her own bags.

She shrugged. "That's Axel. He's actually been better than usual, if you can believe that."

Roxas gave her a skeptical look.

Namine smiled grimly. "Last time he accidentally set the mall on fire."

He raised his eyebrows. "Wow."

"Yeahhh," she sighed, and they watched as Axel quickly lost his temper and started to argue with the employee.

"So what? It was in my way!" Roxas heard him shout.

"You could have walked around!" the employee shouted back.

"Didn't you hear me? It was _in _my _way!_"

"You know," Namine said, not taking her eyes off of Axel, "he may be an idiot most of the time, but he always means well. He always _tries_ to do the right thing. Or what he thinks is the right thing, which sometimes isn't actually the right thing, but you have to give him credit for trying, you know? He'd throw himself in front of a bus for his friends. Even Demyx." She paused. "Maybe. On a good day."

Roxas gave her a confused look at that last part, but she didn't elaborate.

"Axel is…" She hesitated, then smiled. "Axel is like an untrained puppy. You may come home to find the house destroyed sometimes, but he only did it because he missed you."

"A puppy," Roxas said thoughtfully, and he smiled at the image of a dog with Axel's bright red spikey hair.

Namine nodded. "A big, goofy, hyper, impossible to train puppy."

They watched as a security guard approached Axel.

"Time to go?" Roxas asked, exchanging a glance with Namine.

She grinned. "I think so."

Together they hurried over and each caught him by an arm, apologizing profusely to the irate store employee as they dragged Axel away.

"SO IS YOUR FACE!" Axel shouted backward as Roxas and Namine wrestled him out of the store and onto a bench. Several passersby paused to stare but hurried on their way when Axel glared fiercely at them.

"He didn't say anything to you," Roxas pointed out.

"I know," Axel replied, breathing heavily, eyes still narrowed. "That was a pre-emptive comeback."

Roxas tilted his head to the side to better study Axel. "That doesn't even make sense."

"Your face doesn't even make sense," Axel muttered, still scowling at the store entrance.

"Real mature," Namine said. She stood and motioned for them to do the same. "Come on, let's get some ice cream and get the hell out of here before you set the mall on fire again."

"That wasn't me," Axel protested as they followed her toward the food court.

"Oh, really? That match just happened to light itself and jump into your hand?"

"Okay, maybe it _was_ me, but I didn't mean to set the whole building on fire."

"Well, you_ did_."

"I hate shopping," Axel announced to no one in particular or maybe to the world at large; Roxas couldn't tell.

He wasn't paying much attention to the conversation anymore. The fluorescent lights and the colorful flashes of advertisements and the people everywhere were all starting to make his head pound and his chest constrict. It was all he could do just to keep strolling calmly along like nothing was wrong. Axel glanced at him and seemed to notice, because he shortened his stride and held out a hand to Roxas.

"Want me to carry something?"

"Sure," Roxas said, a little surprised, and handed over one of the bags. "Thanks."

"No problem."

"Aww, Axel, look at you being all civil," Namine said, tossing back a grin. "Maybe Roxas is a good influence on you."

Axel shrugged. "He could still be a serial killer."

"You know, that _would _explain why I keep waking up covered in blood and holding a machete," Roxas said, frowning as though in deep concentration. Axel laughed and the anxiety in Roxas's chest eased as he grinned back.

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The car ride back was quiet, partially because they had taken Namine's silver Honda Civic rather than Bessie the clanking station wagon, and partially because Axel and Roxas were too intent on their ice cream to say anything.

It had been exactly a week. Seven days. Roxas considered what this meant and came to the conclusion that he wasn't quite sure what it meant. For a week so far he had lived without knowing who he was. And in a week of living with Axel he already felt like he knew him well. He had already formed a sort of daily routine. Did that mean something, having a routine? It was nice; it broke the day up into little pieces so it was easier to deal with, but did it mean anything important?

_Maybe it means I'm becoming somebody else. Somebody new._

The thought came out of nowhere and startled Roxas so much that he accidentally got strawberry ice cream on his nose instead of in his mouth. He blinked and wiped at it with his – well, actually Axel's – coat sleeve, hoping no one saw. Fortunately Namine's eyes were on the road and Axel seemed to be busy with his chocolate peanut butter swirl.

_Somebody new_, Roxas thought, gazing out the window at the blurred trees and houses and snow. Could you really be someone new if you couldn't even remember who you used to be?

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"Thank you," Roxas told Namine as he climbed out of the passenger seat. "For the clothes and – and everything."

"Yeah, thanks for the ice cream, Nam!" Axel called as he dragged Roxas's bags into the house.

She smiled and waved a dismissive hand. "Don't worry about it. It was fun hanging out with you guys."

Roxas blinked. Hanging out? Like they were friends now? "Oh…um, yeah. And I – I might...want to…" He trailed off uncertainly.

Namine seemed to understand. "Axel said he got you a cell phone a few days ago, right?"

"Yeah, after I got lost," Roxas replied, absently touching his pocket to make sure the phone was still there.

"Well, if you want to try art therapy one day, or even if you want me to refer you to another therapist, all you have to do is give me a call. Axel has my number. He'll give it to you."

"Okay," said Roxas. "Thanks."

"Take care of yourself," Namine said, and rolled the window up.

He stepped back, watching as her car pulled out of the driveway and disappeared around the corner.

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"Have we watched _UP_ yet?" Axel asked later that night, sitting cross-legged in front of the DVD shelf and pulling down movies one by one.

"Yeah," Roxas said from the couch.

Axel frowned. "_The Lion King_?"

"Twice."

"What about_ Aladdin_?"

"We watched that yesterday."

"_Fox and the Hound_?"

"Yep." Roxas paused, then added, "Do you have any non-Disney movies?"

Axel dropped _Fox and the Hound_ into the reject pile. "Sure. Sorry. I just like Disney art. Let's see…um… How about _Rent_? Do you like musicals?"

"I think so," Roxas said.

Something in his voice, a melancholy twinge, made Axel look up. Roxas had made himself as small as possible in the middle of the couch, drawing his knees tight to his chest and encircling them with his arms.

Axel stood. "Are you cold? D'you want a blanket?"

Roxas shook his head, eyes on the floor. "I'm okay. This is warm," he said, tugging at the sleeve of the new black and white checkered hoodie Namine had bought him.

"Roxas," Axel said after a weighty pause, "what's wrong?"

He shook his head again. "I'm okay," he repeated, not all that convincingly.

Axel crossed the room and sat down beside him. Roxas didn't react beyond leaning almost imperceptibly away, and Axel resisted the temptation to lay a reassuring hand on his shoulder for fear of spooking him.

"Today was good, wasn't it?" Axel asked tentatively, looking down at Roxas.

"Yeah," Roxas replied, and it was almost more of an exhale than a word. His eyes flickered upward toward Axel's for a moment, just a flash of blue and then gone again, studying the floor. "Yeah, it was. Namine is nice. I just…" He stopped and shuddered as though shaking something off his shoulders. "Nevermind, it's nothing."

"Y'know, you really don't have to do that."

Roxas looked up again. "Do what?"

"Pretend like that," Axel said, with a wry smile. "Like everything's fine."

Roxas considered him for a moment, then said all in one breath like admitting a crime, "I dreamed something weird last night."

Axel raised an eyebrow. "Like what kind of weird?" When Roxas looked confused he explained, "Because I can only deal with certain kinds of weird. Not with the, you know…weird kind of weird." When Roxas looked even more confused he explained further (mostly to see how the kid would react), "If it's a sex dream you can save it for someone else."

"Wh-_what?_" Roxas spluttered, and Axel couldn't help grinning a little at his appalled expression. "N-no! No!"

"No?" Axel teased.

"_No_," Roxas said with a quick glare, seeming to have recovered. "There was – it was – more of a nightmare than a dream…"

"What happened?" Axel asked seriously.

Roxas closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "There was a woman," he said at last, eyes opening slowly. "She was sleeping or sick or something…she was sleeping on the floor, and it was really cold. That wasn't scary or anything though, I was just worried about her. Then…there was…someone grabbed me."

Axel nodded and tried to ignore the sickly little jump his heart had just given. "Then what?"

"I don't know," Roxas murmured, closing his eyes again briefly and letting his legs fall down into a cross-legged position. "He was shaking me, really hard, and I think he was yelling, but I don't know what. Someone told him to stop and he let go. I fell. And that was it." He shook his head and looked at Axel. "Do you think it means something?"

"I don't know," Axel said. "Does it feel like it does?"

"It feels…heavy," Roxas said, then gave a hollow laugh. "But that doesn't make sense."

"It makes total sense," Axel replied. "There's a difference between a heavy dream and a fluffy one. There's a difference between nightmares about giant tarantulas and nightmares about somebody shaking you and yelling."

Roxas was quiet for a while, fiddling with the drawstring on his hoodie. "Namine thinks I was traumatized," he said at last.

"She does."

He looked suddenly at Axel, who was not prepared for the intensity of his gaze. "Do you think so too?"

"I…" Axel was taken aback, unable to look away from those bright blue eyes. Blue, blue, blue. It had been the only color he could see lately every time he picked up a paint brush. He had assumed it was about Isa. "I…don't know," he replied distantly, struck by a strange epiphany.

Roxas's gaze hardened. "I have to know," he said, the perfect depiction of quiet determination.

Axel wasn't sure why exactly he did what he did next. Maybe it was something to do with the fierce way Roxas was looking at him with those blueblueblueblue eyes, like he was ready to punch Axel out if it would reveal his past (what could he say, he found strength attractive), or maybe it was exhaustion-induced insanity as the result of a long day of shopping and arguing with department store employees, or maybe it was just because Axel was an absolute and complete idiot who didn't know – had never known – how to control his emotions.

But he wasn't thinking about any of that at the time. Inside his head one thought was pounding, over and over: _Don't go. _He found Roxas's smaller hand beside him and covered it with his own, heart racing faster when Roxas didn't pull away but just looked up at him in slight confusion.

"I like you," Axel said. His tongue felt thick and heavy.

Roxas stared at him and Axel kicked himself mentally. What the fuck? I _like _you? God, he was _stupid_. This was supposed to be a serious conversation. This was totally _not the time_ for his stupidity. And yet for some reason he couldn't stop babbling and sounding even _stupider_.

"I mean, uh, not in a_ weird_ way. I just – you're – I liked this past week. I like talking to you, I like you being here, I like not being alon – shit, that's fucking pathetic, I'm sorry." He let go of Roxas's hand and started to stand, figuring he had better find a gun or a tall building or something to put himself out of his misery.

But before he could get away, Roxas's hand found his again, weighing him down like an anchor. Axel turned back in bemusement.

Roxas was surveying him calmly, as though people he had just met declared these sorts of things to him all the time. "It's okay," he said. "I mean, it _is_ weird. But it's okay." He hesitated. "I…like you too."

"Oh," Axel said weakly, falling back onto the couch. "Good."

"Yeah."

They sat there together for a long, awkward moment, just holding hands like a pair of shy middle schoolers. Axel's mind raced a mile a minute while he tried to figure out what the hell he had just done and what the hell he was supposed to say next. He wanted to say something nice. Something nice and non-threatening and non-creepy and at least slightly coherent.

What he said was, "Namine's going to _kill_ me."

Roxas looked at him in surprise, then burst into sudden laughter.

"What?" said Axel. "She is! She's been telling me not to get attached to you from the beginning. It's going to be horrible! She'll probably skewer me!"

"It's not _that_," Roxas said between laughs, "it's – your face –"

Axel snatched his hand away and folded his arms in mock indignation. "I have a perfectly normal face."

"No," Roxas said, suddenly assuming a serious expression. "No, I think there's something severely wrong there."

"Pft, like your face is any better," Axel scoffed. "At least I don't look like I got beaten up."

Roxas narrowed his eyes and for a moment Axel thought he had said something unforgivably idiotic. But then a grin spread across Roxas's face. "True," he said. "You just look like you're about to get beaten up."

"Wha – hey!" Axel dodged the pillow that Roxas chucked at his head and snatched it out of the air. "I hope you know what you've started," he warned.

Roxas just smiled and reached for another pillow.

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Fifteen minutes later Axel found himself on the living room floor, buried under a mountain of more pillows than he had been aware that he owned. "I let you win," he called, spitting out a few feathers.

"Of course you did," Roxas replied from the kitchen, where he was feeding the cats their dinner due to Axel's current incapacitation.

"No, really," Axel said, not sure he was getting through to the kid.

"Uh-huh."

Axel sighed and let himself fall face first onto the pillow pile, closing his eyes and half-smiling. Only half because he felt good but he felt _odd_, too, probably because he hadn't felt good like this in a long time. It was strange, the lightness in his chest, the way laughing came so easily lately that it was like breathing. It scared him a little. He thought maybe he liked it.

Namine was definitely going to kill him.

"Totally worth it," he muttered, tasting cotton.

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Ending notes:

PILLOW FIIIIIIIIIIGHT! Also, thanks so much for reading Chapter Four! Can't believe it's at four chapters now. In the next chapter everyone will be confused and Axel's 'friend' Demyx will come into the picture, which may explain 99% of the confusion. Hoorah.


	5. Chapter Five: Bee Eff

Salutations! Thank you so much for the reviews on Chapter Four. I hope you enjoy Chapter Five, 'cause it took me for-freaking-ever. Be forewarned that this chapter is a bit heavier on the angst than the others. Also liberal use of the f-bomb. Whoops.

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_He's here again. Doesn't want to be, but it's never really mattered what he does or does not want. He stares and tries not to see but it's Isa, Isa, Isa, and so how could he not look?_

_ It's the same as it was the last time he had this dream, and the first time long before that, when it was reality. The blue is nearly gone from Isa's hair, fading just like the color from his skin, back to bleached blond. There hasn't been time to dye it, hasn't been time to pry him away from the hospital bed and the nurses and the doctors who flit in and out of the room all the time. His eyes are sunken and dulled by the drugs, the painkillers that he's been refusing for so long, that he wouldn't take until Axel begged him _Please Isa please, you're hurting, it doesn't matter anymore, please, don't be such a fucking idiot.

_ Axel feels the tears start again and he lets out a rough exhale of frustration, reaches to wipe them away but they stream down anyway. He's never understood tears, never known the way to deal with them. Anger he knows well. He knows how to _burn_, nerves and skin and bones lit ablaze with rage – _

_ Tears, though. No. He's never known the way of tears._

_ "Don't be such a baby," Isa murmurs, eyes flickering toward him, and Axel's vision is blurred but he knows well enough the stern look Isa is giving him; he's seen it a thousand times. "You knew this was going to happen."_

_ He wants to say something else – _But I didn't, Isa, at least not like this_ – but he never can, even in the dreams. "No," he says, barely able to get the word out through the tightness in his chest. It's like this every time; even when he knows it's a dream still he speaks the words he spoke before, bound to follow some script etched in stone long ago._

_ "Stubborn," Isa laughs softly and closes his eyes. "Why are you always so stubborn?"_

_ Axel doesn't answer, just holds tight to Isa's hand – cold and clammy – and tries to breathe. He tastes salt as the tears trickle down to the corners of his dry lips and he can't fucking _deal_ with it, can't understand –_

_ "Stop crying," Isa says, opening his drug-dulled eyes again to focus on Axel. He reaches a trembling hand to touch Axel's face. "It doesn't suit you."_

_ Axel laughs, or tries but mostly chokes. "Shit, Isa. Does it suit anybody?" he asks, voice shaking._

_ Isa leans his head back against the pillow and smiles. "Oh, definitely. Some people make beautifully tragic figures, weeping all poetically. You, though – it doesn't look right on you at all."_

_ And Axel can't help it – his lips twitch upward in a shaky smile. _

_ "There you go," Isa says, and sighs. "That's better."_

_ "Don't go," Axel blurts out and immediately regrets it, as always, always, he regrets it – even though this is what his entire being is screaming, this is what pounds through his skull, what hammers in his chest with every heartbeat. _Don't go. Don't go. Don't go.

_ He waits to be mocked but Isa is silent, gazing at him with a troubled expression for the first time. "You knew this was going to happen," Isa says again, except gentler this time, like maybe he's trying to say_ I'm sorry.

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Axel blinked and sat up groggily, reaching over to flick the lights on, trying to chase the last remnants of That Dream from his mind. It wouldn't work; he knew it wouldn't work. There would be bits and pieces of it caught in his head all day long – a gesture (Isa's smile), a word ("Stubborn…"), an image (faded blue hair, bleeding back into bleached blond). He wanted to hold his head in his hands and wait for the worst of it to pass, like an illness, a kind of memory sickness.

Instead he threw off the covers and stumbled out of bed. And because it was the only thing that seemed to make sense, he headed down the hall toward the guest room. Toward Roxas.

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The kid was sound asleep on his side with his arms wrapped around a pillow, Moo curled up next to his head. He looked so comfortable there that Axel almost turned around and walked away.

Almost.

"Roxas," he whispered, then increased his volume when he got no response. "Roxas. Roxas. Roxas. Rox –"

"_What?_" Roxas growled with surprising force, raising his head to glare at Axel, who added _Never wake a sleeping Roxas_ to his list of Rules to Live By. (Coincidentally the list doubled as Rules Broken Thus Far.)

"I –" Axel stopped, his mind abruptly going blank as he realized that maybe this didn't make sense after all. What exactly was he doing here again? What was he going to say? Oh, hey, just wanted to tell you that like ten seconds ago I relived seeing my boyfriend on his deathbed. Nifty, huh?

"Um," Axel said.

This did not seem to be an acceptable response. Roxas tossed aside the pillow and sat up, causing Moo to give an indignant twitch of the tail and jump down from the bed. "Is something wrong?" he asked, searching Axel's face.

"No," said Axel, taking a step backward. "It's nothing. Never mind. Sorry."

Roxas made a small, frustrated noise that struck Axel as sounding remarkably like an angry cat. "It is _not _nothing. You didn't wake me up at –" He paused to check the phone at his bedside. "—two-fourteen in the morning for nothing." It sounded almost like a threat.

"No, I…" Axel faltered, then regrouped. "Roxas! Have you ever seen a red moon?"

Roxas blinked. "What?"

"The moon! It's red tonight! Isn't that amazing? It is, right? Actually it's more orange-ish tonight. Like papaya-colored. Hey, have you ever had a papaya?"

Roxas looked entirely lost now. "A what?"

"A _papaya_, Roxas. It's _tropical_," Axel explained, speaking as if to a small child. The words just kept flooding from his mouth; he seemed to be helpless to stop them. "They're from, like, Hawaii or something, I dunno. Hawaii's basically all volcanoes anyway so it doesn't matter, everyone there's going to die in a sea of lava probably… Anyway papayas are orange. On the inside. I don't know about the outside. Maybe green? Or is that mangoes? D'you think that's mangoes?"

Roxas stared at him for a long moment. "I think…maybe we should go for a walk," he said at last, getting reluctantly out of bed.

"Yeah," Axel said, pacing back and forth, trying and failing to calm the weird fluttery feeling in his chest. "A walk. Exactly. Obviously. Right. Okay. We'll go for a walk."

Roxas just looked at him with his trademark furrowed brow, which was his way of saying _Really? Are you really this ridiculous? _

Slightly heartened by this, Axel stumbled into the hall and went in search of a coat.

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"Dreams, man!" Axel declared suddenly, causing Roxas to flinch beside him like a startled deer, "Dreams friggin' suck!"

Seeing as it was two in the morning and all, the neighborhood was otherwise silent, which made Axel's exclamations all the more jarring. Roxas kept pace beside him, which wasn't always easy because of Axel's freakish height and therefore long stride. Meanwhile Axel went rambling obliviously on, not seeming to care if anyone listened or responded at all. Roxas figured it was only out of nervousness anyway so he didn't bother to interrupt.

"Dreams. Dreams dreams dreams. Everybody thinks dreams are friggin' awesome – well, _some_ of us don't dream about rainbows and unicorns all the time." Pause. "Actually if you do dream about rainbows and unicorns all the time that's just weird. You're just weird. You're a freak. And I kind of hate you, because shit, what I wouldn't give for a few unicorns in my dreams."

Okay, thought Roxas, he had a bad dream. That explains this. Sort of.

Axel sighed heavily and shoved his gloved hands into his pockets, going oddly silent for a total of ten whole seconds before he said, "Roxas."

It took a moment for Roxas, his brain still muddled by sleep, to process that he was being addressed. "Yeah?" he responded, a beat too late.

"This is a mess, isn't it?" Axel stopped and turned to smile wearily at him under the glow of the street lights.

Roxas considered him. "Kind of," he replied. He waited for Axel to laugh or start babbling again or at least keep moving.

But Axel just sighed again and sat down right there on the sidewalk, leaning back against a three-foot wall of snow.

"What are you doing?" Roxas asked, kneeling down beside him.

"I'm tired," Axel said.

"So let's go back."

Axel glanced at him and then stared back at the cold concrete for a few seconds before rocketing to his feet so fast that Roxas had to jump to the side to avoid being knocked backward. "And _burn things,_" he said, like issuing a proclamation.

Roxas stared, sure he hadn't heard right. "…What?"

"Burn things," Axel repeated, his green eyes glowing over bright. "Let's go back and burn things."

"But…why?" Roxas asked, bewildered.

Axel began pacing in a tight circle. "I have a ton of matches," he said. "And I have some shitty paintings I want to get rid of. They should probably go up in flames, I think. I think. I don't know. I don't like them. Might as well burn them, right?" He rounded suddenly on Roxas. "Am I crazy?"

Yes, Roxas wanted to say. Yes. Very much so.

"You're…Axel," was what he said, giving a helpless sort of shrug.

Axel blinked as though this information surprised him. "Yeah," he said, and stood there staring vacantly into space.

It was then that Roxas fully realized that for whatever reason, the Axel he knew had temporarily vanished and been replaced by Crazy Zombie Axel.

"Come on," he said, taking Crazy Zombie Axel by the wrist and tugging him forward. Surprisingly he encountered no resistance. Roxas turned and led them dutifully in the direction of home.

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"I need coffee," Axel groaned as he rubbed his forehead, sitting backwards on a kitchen chair. Roxas was doing something to the stove; he didn't know what, didn't feel like turning around.

"It's almost three in the morning," Roxas said, which obviously had nothing to do with coffee.

"And?" Axel said, failing to see the point.

"Well, aren't you going back to sleep?"

Axel had to turn around now just to look incredulously at the kid. He appeared to be making tea. Great. More_ tea_. "Sleep? You think I'm going back to sleep after that?"

Roxas's gaze was sharp and Axel regretted his words before they left his lips. "After what?"

"After…all the…fun we just had," Axel replied lamely. "You know. Freezing our asses off on this fine January night – morning – whatever. Really invigorating."

"Oh," said Roxas, turning away to pour the tea. "Then I guess you don't need coffee after all."

"No! No, I need it! God, I hate you people!" Axel snapped and then pillowed his head on his folded arms with a sulky glare.

"Drink this," Roxas said, apparently untroubled by this behavior. He set down a steaming mug of tea on the table in front of Axel, who sniffed at it suspiciously.

"Chamomile? Really?" Axel sighed. "Roxas, I'm not going to sleep tonight, I told you, not after –" He stopped.

Roxas raised his eyebrows. "After that _invigorating_ walk?" he offered.

"Yeah, exactly," Axel said as he stared sullenly at the tea.

He was aware of Roxas watching him, so he lifted the mug to his lips and took a sip. This seemed to satisfy Roxas, who had apparently taken up the position of Axel's mother, because he sighed and sat down in the adjacent chair.

"Wait a minute," Axel said suddenly, fixing Roxas with an accusatory stare. "Why the hell are you taking care of me? _You're_ the injured amnesiac here."

Roxas only shrugged in response, his blue eyes revealing nothing but sleep deprivation. Axel frowned and went back to his tea.

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Roxas wasn't sure when he'd fallen asleep. There hadn't been any dreams that he could recall, which was weird because there was usually at least one unfathomable nightmare thrown in there somewhere. He just knew that one minute he was listening to Axel go on and on about all the paintings he wanted to burn ("And then there's the pickle. What the hell would anybody want with a painting of a pickle?") – and the next minute he was waking up with his cheek pressed against the wood of the kitchen table. "Ugh," he groaned, sitting up and stretching his sore back.

"Sweeeet, at least one of you's awake."

He started so badly that he almost knocked his chair over. There was _some guy_ sitting across from him, chomping on an apple from the bowl of fruit on the table and dressed in a leather jacket with chains and spikes and stuff all over it, like some kind of rock star wannabe. His short, dark blond hair was spiked up in a strange formation that Roxas had never (as far as he knew) seen before, and he was regarding Roxas as though he were an interesting scientific specimen.

Roxas looked quickly from Wannabe Rock Star to Axel, who was still sitting backwards in his chair but was now sound asleep, resting his head on his arms.

Great. So it was just Roxas and a trespassing rock star wannabe. He felt something brush against his leg and jumped again, looking down to see Finster gazing up at him. Okay, so it was Roxas, a trespassing rock star wannabe, and a cat. Fan-freaking-tastic.

"Who are you?" Roxas demanded, narrowing his eyes in what he hoped was an intimidating manner at the intruder, who only smiled back.

"Name's Demyx. Friend of Axel. And I know _you_, blondie. You're Axel's new bee eff."

"What?" Roxas said, momentarily thrown off. "Bee…eff?"

"_Boyfriend_," Demyx said, implying the _duh_ with a roll of his eyes.

He was already beginning to remind Roxas less of a rock star and more of a fourteen year old girl. Nevertheless, Roxas felt himself go red.

"How do you – I mean I'm _not_, but how do you know who I – ?"

Demyx just grinned maddeningly and tilted his head to the side. "I'll admit, Axel doesn't usually go for the cute-and-barely-legal type, but let's see…you're in his house…"

Roxas gave an indignant huff at the word 'cute.' "Wait a minute. That doesn't –"

"Wearing his shirt…"

He looked down at the borrowed Mickey Mouse pajama shirt. "That – that doesn't mean –"

"And you won't quit _blushing_," Demyx finished with another irritating raise of his brows.

Roxas glared and was about to tell him to shut the fuck up when Axel spoke for him.

"Fuck off, Demyx," Axel mumbled, still slumped with his head resting on his arms.

"So you were awake," Demyx said.

"No," Axel grumbled, shifting to reveal a green-eyed glare. "Your stupid whiny little voice woke me up. What are you doing in my house?"

"What's _he_ doing in your house?" Demyx countered with an accusatory finger pointed at Roxas.

Axel followed his gaze and yawned widely, apparently unconcerned. "Stop bothering Roxas," he said as he stood up and headed toward the kitchen cabinets. He pulled down a box of Lucky Charms (Roxas's favorite cereal thus far) and turned suddenly to glare at Demyx again as though just remembering that he hated him. "And get the fuck out of my house," he said.

Demyx didn't seem all that offended, just faintly disappointed. "Aw, that's not how you should talk to your friends," he said, rubbing the back of his neck and frowning.

"We aren't friends. For the last time, _you are not my friend,_" Axel snapped.

Demyx shrugged and, improbably, took a ukulele out from within his jacket and started to strum a cheerful tune by way of response. Roxas watched his fingers move over the strings and even in his anger he couldn't help grudgingly admitting – though only to himself – that Demyx was _good. _Really good.

Axel was unappreciative. He actually twitched while pouring the Lucky Charms and spilled some hearts, stars, and horseshoes on the floor. "I _will _set that thing on fire," he said, brandishing a box of matches at Demyx. Roxas briefly wondered why Axel had matches in his pajama pants pocket but decided he didn't want to know.

The ukulele let out a sad little note and stopped. "How come we never hang out anymore?" Demyx said plaintively, turning the instrument over in his hands.

"Maybe," said Axel with forced calm, "because you keep doing stupid shit like breaking into my house."

Roxas blinked. "So you are friends," he said. "Or you were."

Axel sighed as he set down the bowl of Lucky Charms in front of Roxas. "Here you go. And no. We went to high school together and he followed me around all the time, but we've never been friends."

"That's not true!" Demyx protested. "It used to be me and you and Isa all the time, kicking ass and taking names!"

"You mean skipping class and getting detentions," Axel said with the ghost of a grin.

"Same thing," Demyx shrugged. "We used to hang out every day."

"Because we were forced by state law to be in the same building," Axel said, rolling his eyes.

"Come on, you're just being an avoidant asshole and you know it. I haven't even gotten so much as a text from you since the anniversary."

"The anniversary of what?" Roxas asked, then regretted his words when Axel looked suddenly too pale and overtired, the way he had at two in the morning, sitting with his back against the snow. For a moment it was quiet and even Demyx looked grim and uneasy.

At last Axel spoke. "The anniversary of Isa's death."

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It was almost comical, the way Roxas was looking at him, like he had just accidentally run over Axel's cat. But Axel resisted the impulse to laugh, as he had a feeling that laughing would probably make him seem psychotic.

"Oh – sorry, I –" Roxas faltered.

"Nah, it's cool," Axel said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "It's been a while now."

Demyx gave him a funny look. "It was two years ago," he said.

"That's a while."

"You know," Demyx said thoughtfully, leaning forward to study him (Axel immediately leaned back), "Maybe Namine was right. Maybe you are running away from dealing with this."

"You're friends with Namine?" Roxas said with a note of skepticism.

Demyx opened his mouth but Axel cut him off with a glare. "No. They just like to get together every now and then to gossip about me."

"Hey, we're just worried about you, man," Demyx said, fiddling with his ukulele, which emitted a few soft, lingering notes. "You never talked to anybody about it afterwards. What are we s'posed to think?"

Axel was uncomfortably aware of Roxas's eyes on him. Did they really have to have this discussion in front of him? He grit his teeth. "You're supposed to think, 'hey, maybe this isn't any of my business' and stop bothering me."

There was a pause. Then Demyx straightened and said, "So…anyway…do you guys wanna play Guitar Hero?"

Axel stared at him incredulously. "Don't you have a job at that music shop down the street?"

"Yeah, I took today off," Demyx said carelessly, strumming the ukulele.

"For the love of god, why would you do something like that?"

"So I could come see you," Demyx said. "Duh."

"Is it illegal to set someone's hair on fire?" Axel muttered under his breath so that only Roxas beside him could hear.

"Don't ask me, I'm just an injured amnesiac," Roxas murmured back.

Axel grinned. "Right. Sorry." He cleared his throat and turned to Demyx. "Fine. Whatever. Go set up the Guitar Hero crap in the other room. Feel free to start without us. See, normal people, they need to eat breakfast before they go around committing felonies and whatnot."

"Yeah!" Demyx bounced up from his seat and started to practically _skip_ happily from the room. Then he paused to look from Axel to Roxas to Axel again. "Ohhh, waaaiiit a minute. I see how it is," he said, grinning and raising his eyebrows suggestively. "You wanna be alone with your new boyfriend. Isn't he a little…ah…_young_ for you, Ax?"

"I'm _nineteen_," Roxas snarled before Axel could even reach for a match. Axel glanced at him in surprise – the kid was practically radiating with a kind of fierce, bitter anger that Axel had only seen hints of up until now. "Nine. _Teen_. And if you don't shut up about that _right now_ I'm going to have no choice but to strangle you."

"Whoa, chill the hell out, man," Demyx said, looking thoroughly unsettled (much to Axel's satisfaction).

Roxas just glared. Axel observed and found himself hoping he would never be on the receiving end of that glare. It was freaking _scary._

"Jeez, I'm _going_, okay?" Demyx hurried out of the kitchen, shooting a fleeting glance over his shoulder like he thought Roxas was going to come running after him with a kitchen knife.

Axel grinned. "Good work," he said with a thumbs up. But Roxas didn't so much as crack a smile. He was watching Axel closely as though seeing him for the first time.

"Oh," Axel said, the grin slipping from his face. "Let me guess. You want the whole story."

Roxas nodded, and though his gaze was sure, his voice was unsteady. "Yeah. I mean. If you want to tell it."

He never wanted to tell it. In fact he had worked very hard to avoid telling it for the past two years or so. But he looked into Roxas's calm blue eyes and somehow just like that the words began to tumble out of his mouth before he could stop them, stilted at first but then faster and smoother.

"Well, let's see. Once upon a time…there were two idiot teenagers." He sighed and shook his head, dropping the storyteller voice. "He was – Isa was – my boyfriend from high school. We met when we were fifteen. He was a rich snob and I was a poor delinquent," his mouth curved upward, remembering, "and we were totally, ridiculously, stupidly in love."

Roxas studied him in silence, not judging, just watching, and Axel kept talking.

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He told Roxas about the little things first.

About how they'd met when they got paired together on a science project, during which Axel blew up three beakers. ("The first one was by accident, but then I just thought it was funny," he explained.) About how Isa was the one who had asked _him_ out, which was weird because Axel had been the one who had followed Isa around "yapping at him like a retarded puppy."

He told Roxas about the little things because he was afraid to get to the big things. Little things were better. Easier. Like the white picket fence, and how they'd painted it themselves, how they'd pretended to be like a real family.

"And it worked somehow," Axel said, hearing the words fall from his lips as though from far away. "We just got each other. He would call me an emotional idiot all the time and I'd call him a selfish asshole. I thought he was too stiff and he thought I was too – all over the place. He was missing a mom and I was missing a dad. He sucked at English and I sucked at math. He knew how to fix appliances and I knew how to break them." Axel gave a jerky shrug. "It worked. We were totally inseparable and totally shameless; we were that annoying couple you see making out in the line at Dunkin Donuts. We even went to the same college, and when Isa's dad died during senior year of high school the rich bastard left Isa enough money that we were able to buy a house together. My mom was pissed…and we didn't really know what we were doing with a house – or at least, I didn't – but we figured it out as we went."

He hesitated, rapping his fingers nervously on the table. Roxas reached out and rested his hand on Axel's arm, a small gesture but a steadying one. Axel took a long, slow breath and released it.

"Leukemia," he said dully. "Freshman year of college."

He was unable to explain any further than that but Roxas seemed to understand because his fingers tightened suddenly around Axel's arm. Axel touched them absentmindedly with his other hand, fingertips brushing over fingertips.

"He wanted me to stay in my classes but I was failing them all anyway. I dropped out. Namine used her ever so mysterious connections to get me a job as an illustrator to help with expenses, but Isa's dad's money covered most of the medical stuff." Axel paused. "It didn't really matter. He died that summer."

There was a long pause between them. Axel's head pounded with a combination of exhaustion and stress and maybe something else, he wasn't sure. He kept his eyes away from Roxas, not sure he wanted to see the kid's reaction.

"Is that what you dreamed about?" Roxas finally asked. "Earlier?"

Axel forgot and looked straight at him. "How did you – ?"

Roxas shrugged. "Just guessing."

Axel gazed at him for a moment. "Well," he said at last, leaning back in his chair, "there you go. That's my tragic tale of woe and misery. I hope you enjoyed it."

"It was a sad story," Roxas agreed. "But I don't think it really ends like that."

"Oh my god, if you go all Disney happy ending on me I will _so_ kick you out and then you'll have to live with Demyx," Axel warned. "And Demyx basically lives in a freaking box."

Roxas frowned in mock concern. "I thought you loved Disney."

"Dammit, Roxas, it's about the art. Not the cheesy lines about following your dreams and shit."

Roxas snorted. "You know every word of every one of those movies you showed me and you're saying it's only about the art?"

"Okay, I like the stories too, but –"

"GUYS!" came a sudden shout from the living room. "GUYS, I THINK I JUST GOT ELECTROCUTED!"

Axel and Roxas exchanged a glance and bolted toward the living room.

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"Dude, I can't believe I got electrocuted," Demyx was still excitedly telling them both half an hour later, after Axel had made him lie down on the couch just in case and inspected his hands to be sure there weren't any scorch marks or anything. There weren't.

Axel sighed and threw a pillow at his head. "For the last time, idiot, you just got a shock from trying to plug a bazillion things in my crappy outlets. Electrocuted means you're dead. D, E, A, D. _Dead._ Think you can remember that?"

"Mmmmph," Demyx responded, the pillow muffling all attempts at speech. Roxas suspected that this may have been Axel's intent.

While Axel grumbled to himself and cleaned up the Guitar Hero stuff, Roxas slipped away to the guest bedroom, climbing up to sit cross-legged on his bed. Moo was at his side within seconds; she had a weird way of knowing exactly where he was at any given time. Roxas pet her absentmindedly.

Everything Axel had just told him was whirring nonstop through his head, colliding in a confusing jumble. Somehow he had never thought of Axel as capable of having a "tragic tale of woe and misery." Which was stupid of him, now that he really thought about it, but Axel's behavior didn't exactly lead one to believe anything different. Axel was hyperactive, overprotective, obsessive, paranoid, and sometimes downright psychotic. _Sad,_ though? Roxas wouldn't have even been able to imagine it if he hadn't just seen it with his own eyes.

The knowledge – _Axel is sad_ – felt strange and heavy. He frowned and scratched Moo behind the ears. He had been stupid to think that he knew exactly who Axel was after only a couple of weeks.

"Hey, Roxas?"

He looked up and there was Axel himself, standing in the doorway hesitantly. He was holding a bowl and spoon.

"Yeah?" Roxas said, eyeing the bowl and thinking of soup.

"You didn't eat anything before," Axel said, crossing the room and offering up the bowl, which contained – to Roxas's relief – not soup but Lucky Charms. "It got soggy so I poured you a new bowl."

"Oh yeah. Um, thanks," Roxas said, taking the bowl. The moment his hands touched the ceramic dish he realized abruptly that he was starving. He shoveled the cereal into his mouth as fast as he possibly could without spilling it all over himself, ignoring the amused look Axel was giving him and shifting slightly to the side to allow Axel to sit down beside him.

"Roxas?" Axel said after a moment.

Roxas swallowed the last spoonful of cereal and set the empty bowl down on the bedside table. "Hm?"

Axel tilted his head slightly, looking down at Roxas with a tight, self-conscious smile. "Sorry," he said. "For dumping all of that Isa crap on you."

Roxas blinked at him in surprise, then shrugged. "I asked you to tell me," he said. "I'm – glad you did."

Axel nodded, looking at his hands, then spoke in an odd, quiet voice. "I would've told you before, but I thought it didn't matter. I never actually thought you'd stay."

Roxas watched him, but he didn't look up. He was wearing such a miserable expression that Roxas felt his own chest constrict.

"Well," Axel said when Roxas didn't respond, "better go make sure Demyx hasn't spontaneously combusted or anything…" He gave a forced, hollow laugh and shifted as if to stand, but Roxas caught him by the sleeve.

And then reeled him in.

Axel looked at him in utter bemusement. "What's the matt –"

But he never finished the sentence, as he was interrupted by Roxas's lips firmly pressing against his own.

For a moment Axel seemed to be – astoundingly – struck silent, his face frozen in shock. Roxas waited, heart pounding in his ears, until Axel regained the power of speech. Sort of.

"Th-that – that was – that was…" Axel swallowed and shook his head, eyes wide. "That was a pity kiss," he said at last, sounding slightly breathless but in more of an oh-god-what's-happening kind of way than a just-been-kissed kind of way.

Which was not the reaction that Roxas had been hoping for – though he wasn't sure exactly what reaction he _was_ hoping for. In fact he wasn't sure exactly what he was trying to do at all. Swallowing against the fear in his stomach, he nodded slowly.

"Yeah, it was," he admitted, not releasing his grip on Axel's arm. "But this isn't."

And his hand found the collar of Axel's shirt, pulling him closer to kiss him again –softer this time, lingering a little longer. Instead of stiffening Axel actually responded. Roxas experienced a slight boost of confidence when he realized that he _knew how to do this_; he _remembered_ this.

"Roxas…" Axel mumbled when they broke apart, still looking a little like someone had just dropped a ton of bricks on his head, minus the hair damage. He reached to brush the bangs out of Roxas's eyes and for a fraction of a second Roxas could ignore the nervous thumping of his heart, could ignore the feeling that maybe this wasn't right, could ignore the fact that he had no idea what had happened to bring him to this particular point in his life – just because of the way Axel was looking at him. Which was sickeningly romantic and ridiculous, and yet he was surprised to find that he just flat-out did not care. He started to speak.

"I –"

"A-HA! I _knew_ it!"

Both of them started, turning to see a triumphant Demyx standing in the doorway. "Axel's got a booooyyyyfriiiieeeennnd!" he sang with a wicked grin, and promptly went flouncing off, presumably to tell the entire world.

Axel stared at the empty doorway for a moment, then looked back to Roxas, who gazed back determinedly despite the fact that he was pretty sure his face was burning red.

"Oh, fuck it," Axel said, and dove in for another kiss.

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Well, things are moving a bit fast. We'll see how that works out. And yes, Demyx flounces. It is his preferred method of travel. Anyway, thank you for reading Chapter Five and stay tuned for Chapter Six, in which Namine may or may not kill Axel!


	6. Chapter Six: We're Kinda Doing Something

Hey, welcome to Chapter Six! Thanks for reading this far and thank you thank you thank you for the reviews! I'm kind of shocked that_ I_ made it this far to be honest. Well, I hope you enjoy it.

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The next day was weirdly normal, considering the fact that Roxas and Axel had spent a good chunk of the previous day glued to each other's faces. They ate breakfast – blueberry waffles – together as usual, during which Axel babbled about something to do with the illustrations he was working on for _Cats Cats Cats_, a magazine about – shockingly – cats. Roxas listened and added his own comments every now and then, and everything was normal, everything was fine, and Axel was definitely not looking at him funny and Roxas's stomach was definitely not feeling all quivery, nope, that was definitely just his imagination.

They had held hands on the way to the café though, an event initiated by Axel, who had casually reached over to catch Roxas's hand in his own in an uncharacteristically tentative way that made Roxas's heart give a funny little flip.

Now Roxas sat in their usual corner spot in the café and sipped his mocha cappuccino, shaking his head warningly at the frowning barista whom Axel was harassing.

Axel leaned over the counter, looking quite a bit more deranged than usual in his desperation. His voice had migrated from a demanding tone to a pleading one. "Okay, fine, no espresso. How about a latte? Just a latte! Is that too much to ask for?"

"Sir, I'm sorry but I've been instructed not to serve you any caffeinated beverages," the barista said firmly, her eyes on Roxas, who flashed her a covert thumbs up behind Axel's back.

"By who?" Axel demanded. "Namine? Was it Namine? I thought she didn't know about you guys!"

The barista's eyes flicked from Roxas's face to Axel's. "I'm not at liberty to say, sir," she said, and to her credit she only looked mildly curious when Axel let out a low growl, sounding like a dog whose bone had just been taken away.

"No. _No._ You don't understand. This is the last café within a twenty mile radius that Namine hasn't banned me from," he said, speaking so rapidly that Roxas wondered not for the first time why on earth he thought he needed caffeine to begin with. "_You are my only hope_," he told the barista, hands wrapping around the edge of the counter in a death grip.

She looked slightly disturbed by this notion but only shook her head. "I'm sorry, sir."

Axel cursed and began rummaging through the vast amount of pockets on his pants, turning up loose change and the occasional ten or twenty dollar bill – which struck Roxas as more than a little careless, that he'd just have that kind of money lying around. He threw everything onto the counter, including his cell phone, old gum wrappers, receipts, scribbled plans for paintings, several miniature candy canes, iPod headphones, a red Ace of Hearts card, and an oddly pristine twelve pack of crayons.

"Here," he said, pushing it all in a jumbled mess of a pile toward the barista, who looked like she was considering calling the cops at this point. "Take it. This is everything I have. It's yours, you can have it, I don't care – if you just _get_ – _me _– _a_ – _latte,_" Axel said, and if Roxas had thought he looked deranged before…well, that was just a tenth of how alarming he looked now.

For a moment the barista just stared at him. Then, slowly, she pushed the pile back to his side of the counter. "Sir," she said coolly, "I can get you a hot chocolate, a smoothie, some tea, or decaf. I cannot serve you regular coffee of any type."

Roxas turned his laugh quickly into a cough while Axel stood there spluttering. It had been worth it, the other day, to take the risk of lingering in the café pretending to look at pastries while Axel paced outside and kicked snow around. He'd been able to catch the attention of the manager and explain that his friend was a severe caffeine addict with violent tendencies and really should not under any circumstances be served any caffeinated items from their menu, for the safety of everyone in the vicinity. The manager – a nice guy (despite the eye patch and the weird scars) by the name of Xigbar – had taken one look at Axel, who was determinedly kicking snow into the air and generally just flailing around, and agreed to inform his staff.

Roxas had felt a little guilty but after the alarming amounts of caffeine that Axel had been consuming lately – and the after effects – he figured it was a necessary cruelty. His confidence in his decision was firmly cemented when later that day Axel, fueled by espresso, had somehow managed to set the living room curtains on fire. The whole house still smelled faintly of burnt fabric.

Now Axel was dragging himself to the table, a cup of hot chocolate in hand, just about every pair of eyes in the room following him at this point. The pile of stuff he had tried to bribe the barista with had been shoved hastily back into his pockets and he was trailing bits of receipt paper and wrappers as he walked. He slumped down across from Roxas, disconsolate. Even the inhumanly stiff spikes of his hair seemed to droop sadly.

"Why does everyone hate me?" he muttered, grimacing as he gulped down his drink. "And what is this sugary shit? What did they put in this, a whole bag of sugar?"

"No one hates you," Roxas assured him. "And you're just used to bitter stuff like espresso, that's all."

Axel snorted. "People definitely hate me," he said. "You just don't know them because I try to avoid them because – because they hate me." He paused, then slammed the hot chocolate down on the table. "Dammit, Roxas, I can't – sentence – I'm_ stupid_ without my caffeine in the morning! I can't _believe _she found out about this place. I was so careful…I had _decoys_," he said, looking stricken.

"You're fine," Roxas said, giving Axel an awkward pat on the arm because he looked like he was about to lose it at any second. "It'll be okay. And anyway it's almost afternoon."

"Yeah, yeah, okay," Axel sighed, now with only a vaguely discontent expression. Roxas blinked; that had been way too easy. They were both quiet for a while, and Roxas was just starting to enjoy it when Axel suddenly said, "Hey," and Roxas found himself looking into a pair of green eyes that had locked onto him with their usual unnerving level of intensity.

"Mm?" Roxas said, swallowing the last of his cappuccino and trying not to get nervous.

"Do you wanna…um…go to a movie?" Axel asked. Roxas blinked at him for a moment and so Axel apparently felt the need to add, "Or…something?"

"Uh – yeah, sure," Roxas said, his heartbeat quickening. "…Why?"

Axel frowned and twisted one of his spikes between his fingers, not meeting Roxas's eyes. "Because…um…I think we…we're kinda_ doing _something here," he said.

Roxas stared at him in bewilderment.

"I mean, if we're gonna do this," Axel explained earnestly, now leaning over the table toward him, close enough that Roxas could smell his industrial strength hair gel, "then we should probably do it like you're supposed to, right?"

It took Roxas a while to process this sentence, struggling to understand what it was Axel was referring to. "Are you…asking me out on a date?" he finally said, feeling the heat rise predictably to his face.

Axel smiled, looking relieved that Roxas had gotten it. "Yeah. Yes. That."

"I – but we live together," Roxas said, confused.

Axel nodded. "Yeah, but…that's not…it's not s'posed to – dammit, Roxas, this has the potential to be really weird and I kind of want to unweirdify it." He paused. "Y'know?"

Roxas wasn't sure he knew. "That's not a word," he replied at last.

"You're not a word," Axel retorted.

Roxas ignored this and turned his empty cup over in his hands, picking at it absently. "Okay," he said.

"Okay what?" Axel said, tilting his head downward to better study Roxas's face.

"Okay, I'll go on a date with you."

A wide grin spread across Axel's face. "Cool," he said, and leapt up from his chair, extending his hand to Roxas. "Let's go."

Oh. Apparently he had meant right this minute. Roxas took his hand after a split-second of hesitation and allowed himself to be led out of the café and down the sidewalk back toward the house. And as Axel began to hum "It's a Small World After All", he was unavoidably reminded of the fact that yes, he had just thrown himself into a relationship with a _total crazy person._

Oddly enough, he realized that he was pretty much okay with this.

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"This is such sentimental bullshit," Axel murmured to Roxas beside him. He didn't bother to keep his voice down, which earned him a few dirty looks from the parents of the droves of small children who were sitting amongst them in the movie theater. The small children themselves didn't seem to care; they were too busy throwing popcorn and spilling soda all over themselves. And shrieking every now and then. Couldn't leave out the shrieking.

In retrospect, maybe it hadn't been the greatest idea to go see _Tangled_.

"You chose the movie," Roxas reminded him in a far more considerate whisper.

"You told me to," Axel whispered back, because now not whispering would have made him feel left out. "You knew I would choose Disney. This is all on you."

"Shhhh!" someone hissed somewhere behind him as the two lead characters broke out into a sappy musical number.

"Bull. Shit," Axel whispered again, for emphasis.

Roxas rolled his eyes and turned back to the movie screen and somehow Axel found himself watching Roxas rather than the movie. Which was probably – almost definitely – really creepy of him but whatever, Roxas didn't seem to notice. Maybe Axel's Disney obsession had actually been rubbing off on him, because he was gazing raptly at the screen as the characters sang.

_"And at last I see the light_

_ And it's like the fog has lifted_

_ And at last I see the light_

_ And it's like the sky is new…"_

The light of the screen cast Roxas's face in a dim, golden glow and Axel suddenly wondered how many movies the kid – no. No. He couldn't be 'the kid' anymore because he _wasn't_ a kid because he was _Roxas_. He wondered how many movies _Roxas_ had been to that he couldn't remember, maybe with parents he couldn't remember. Friends he couldn't remember.

"_And it's warm and real and bright_

_ And the world has somehow shifted…"_

Axel frowned. _If he suddenly remembered his old life, left you a note and just walked out the door, what would you do? _Namine had asked, what seemed like eons ago. He hadn't seriously considered the question at the time, because at the time he hadn't felt so much like his chest was caving in when he thought about Roxas leaving. Or not really leaving. Returning. Going _back_, to whatever – whoever – was out there waiting for him. Though it didn't really matter what you called it because either way what it meant was_ going away_.

"_All at once everything looks different_

_ Now that I see you…"_

Roxas shifted, glancing at Axel quizzically, and Axel hastily returned his attention to the movie.

"Friggin' sentimental bullshit," he repeated in a low voice, and felt just a little better when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Roxas smile.

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"Why is it," Roxas asked as they headed for the theater's exit a half hour or so later, "that you can watch _Beauty and the Beast_ and not complain about sentimentalism, but for this movie it's suddenly an issue?"

Axel shrugged. "_Beauty and the Beast_ is a classic," he said lightly. He paused to hold the door open for Roxas. "This one's new. It has to endure my taunts until it proves its worth."

"UP is new," Roxas said, following him to the car, breath ghosting into the cold air. "And you love it."

"UP is a masterpiece," Axel replied, waving an arm around to indicate the scope of the movie's magnificence. Or something. "UP is an except – wait a minute." He stopped walking and looked down at Roxas. "How do you know it's new?"

Roxas shook his head, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I didn't remember it. You told me when we watched it," he said.

Axel seemed to deflate a little at this. "Oh," he said, and started walking again. "So – where do you want to go for lunch?" he continued briskly, as though the exchange had never happened. "There's a pretty good diner around the corner that has awesome chocolate cake. Pretty good fries…Barely passable burgers. No, let's not do that."

"Okay," said Roxas, though he wasn't sure his agreement counted for much.

Axel went rambling on. "Well, let's see…there's that crepe place. If you ever want to die of a chocolate overdose you can get a crepe with chocolate syrup, M&Ms, chocolate chips, and crushed Oreos inside. And then there's the Polka Dot Pony. They're a little…weird…but they have the best freaking soups in the entire world, and the bread – the bread is like – I would give over a piece of my _soul _for that bread, you have_ no idea_. I think they put crack in it." Axel smiled dreamily, apparently enthralled by the idea of crack-infused bread. "Yeah, the stupid crepe place is nothing compared to the Pony. Come on, let's go there." He stopped as they reached Bessie the station wagon, opening the passenger door for Roxas.

"You know, I am capable of opening doors," Roxas said dryly.

Axel gave him an incredulous look. "Roxas," he said in his This Is Obvious Why Don't You Know This voice, "I'm taking you on a _date_. I'm _supposed_ to do shit for you."

"And you know this because…?" Roxas said as he climbed in and fastened his seat belt.

"Movies and television, Roxas. Duh. It's like you don't know me at all." Axel's lips twisted in a wry smile as he folded himself into the driver's seat. "Okay, so maybe I don't really do the whole dating thing," he admitted. "After – you know. What happened. It's been weird."

"So you don't really know what you're _supposed _to be doing," Roxas said, before he could think better of it.

Axel shot him a surprised look, then – to Roxas's relief – burst into laughter. "Nope," he said. "Haven't got a fucking clue. Now let's go get some cracktastic bread."

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The Polka Dot Pony was as bizarre as ever, which somehow comforted Axel, who was trying really hard not to be a nervous wreck at the moment. Luckily he didn't think Roxas could tell. Or maybe Roxas was just distracted by the neon purple ponies flashing on the pink polka-dotted walls. And the (high-pitched, squeaking) Joanna Newsom song that was blasting from the overhead speakers. And the guy with the frilly purple polka-dotted shirt and slate blue hair – cut emo-style, side swept bangs and all – who was standing there patiently with a menu, waiting for them to notice him.

"Heyyy, Zexion!" Axel said, face splitting into a wide grin. "How's it going? Still an honors student? You got new uniforms, I see. That's…um…" He paused, searching for the right adjective. "…unfortunate."

Zexion seemed to be glaring at him, but he couldn't really tell because Zexion's face never changed expression very much regardless of how he felt about you. "Hello, Axel," he said, then glanced at Roxas pointedly.

"Oh, yeah," said Axel, looking to his side where Roxas was standing there, staring around wide-eyed and possibly in a state of shock. "This is my – friend, Roxas." Zexion raised his eyebrows just a little at the hesitation on 'friend' but mercifully didn't say anything. "Roxas, this is Zexion. He and Demyx are –"

He stopped, aware of the fact that Zexion was definitely glaring now. "—people," he finished lamely. "People who…know each other." He couldn't hold back a pained grimace at the awkwardness of that statement.

"Oh," said a bemused looking Roxas. "Um, hi."

Zexion nodded politely. "It's nice to meet you. Can I get you a table?"

"Yeah. A _good _one," Axel said with a meaningful look at Zexion, whose eyebrow gave the tiniest twitch.

"Of course," he said, and, turning stiffly, led them to a secluded little area at the back of the mostly empty restaurant, where there were two neon purple armchairs on either side of a translucent pink table that actually seemed to be glowing with some kind of unholy light.

Axel flopped onto the closest armchair while Roxas sat down cautiously across from him. "All right, I'll have a small coff—"

"No," Zexion interrupted.

"Come_ on_," Axel groaned. "Seriously? Is everybody just out to ruin my life or what?"

Zexion just stood there staring back at him stonily, and Axel wondered for the billionth time how Demyx could possibly _enjoy_ spending time with what was clearly a cleverly disguised robot.

"Fine. Okay. I'll have that weird pineapple shit. Extra whipped cream. Like, _extra extra extra_ whipped cream," Axel said, figuring that if he wasn't going to get any caffeine, sugar was the next best alternative.

"One Pineapple Pony Punch," Zexion muttered, scribbling on a small notepad. "And for you?" he said, looking at Roxas with a politeness that he hadn't shown to Axel since they'd first been introduced years ago. (In all fairness, shortly after they'd been introduced Axel had accidentally dumped a giant iced coffee over his head, but still. It was a mistake anyone could have made.)

"Um – just water," Roxas said, still looking thoroughly confused.

"One water," Zexion muttered and started to scribble it down.

"Scratch that," Axel demanded. "Roxas, you can't just have _water_ at the Polka Dot Pony."

"I can't?" Roxas said.

Axel shook his head vehemently. "No. Let's see…you like strawberry, right?" he asked, remembering the strawberry ice cream Roxas had gotten at the mall.

"I guess."

"Right. He'll have a…what do you guys call it?"

Zexion was, as Axel expected, entirely unruffled by the change of the order. "A Strawberry Shetland Supreme."

Axel looked at Roxas expectantly.

"Sure, why not," Roxas said with the helpless air of someone agreeing to have his appendix removed.

Zexion nodded curtly and strode away.

"You'll like it. I promise," Axel told Roxas, who was looking doubtfully at the menu in front of him. "And if you don't like it we can just dump it on Zexion's head, and you'll definitely like that because that would be hilarious. Trust me. I've seen it happen before."

Roxas started to respond, then winced as the overhead speakers blared Joanna Newsom singing, in all her shrill and earsplitting glory, "NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA…"

"What_ is _that?" he asked, staring up at the speaker with something like mingled horror and fascination.

"Joanna Newsom," Axel answered promptly. "'Peach, Plum, Pear.' Good song. You get used to the whole…horrible voice thing."

Roxas was now looking at him with blatant incredulity. "How do you know about this stuff?" he asked, waving an arm to encompass their surroundings –_ this stuff_ apparently meaning both the music and the restaurant.

"Roxas, please," Axel said with a grin. "I was, at one point, a college student. A college_ art_ student." He paused then added for good measure, "A _gay_ college art student. I kind of got some exposure to alternative culture, you know?"

"What does that even mean – 'alternative culture'?" Roxas asked.

Axel shrugged, lips twitching upward. "I have no idea."

Roxas blinked at him in that disarmingly adorable, perplexed way of his – then began to laugh.

And in that instant Axel discovered, with a painful twist in his chest, that he loved it when Roxas laughed. Loved the way his whole face changed, creased brow and worry lines smoothing into a happiness that was easy and light. Even his normally-hunched shoulders seemed to lift, his small body straightening up, freed from the heavy solemnity that usually pushed him toward the ground. It was like doom and gloom was a default state for Roxas, and Axel understood then that he would do just about _anything _to lift him out of that state, even if only for a split-second.

Which was an absolutely terrifying if not _petrifying_ realization, especially when combined with the, um, _reflecting_ he'd done during the movie. So in order to prevent himself from completely hyperventilating, he turned around and shouted, "HEY, ZEXYPANTS! CHANGE THE DAMN MUSIC!"

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"Axel," Roxas said later, after they had both devoured their soups (butternut squash for Roxas, tomato basil for Axel) and ridiculous amounts of bread, "you're acting weird. Weirder, I mean."

Axel looked trapped for only half a second before he leveled a calm gaze at Roxas and replied, "It's the bread. I told you. There's crack in it."

"For the last time, there are no illegal drugs involved in the making of our bread," Zexion sighed as he walked past them toward another table of customers.

"See, he says that, but I can't think of any other reason for him to be wearing that hideous uniform other than a tragic and debilitating addiction to drugged bread," Axel told Roxas in a conspiratorial tone.

"You can't think of _any_ other reason?" Roxas repeated, then shook his head – Axel was just trying to distract him, and he was succeeding. "You're acting weird," he said again. "You're kind of…twitchy."

In fact, during the meal Axel had dropped his soup spoon a total of at least twelve times, and at one point had accidentally sent a small chunk of bread flying through the air to hit Zexion in the eye. (At least Roxas was pretty sure that was an accident.) He had chattered on normally enough but his stories seemed even more randomly cobbled together than usual (at one point he claimed to have had a pet chinchilla, which he abruptly changed to a pet giraffe halfway through the story), and occasionally he had laughed nervously for what seemed like no reason at all. Roxas wanted to attribute this to first-real-date anxiety but he had trouble believing that Axel would suffer from such a thing.

"Listen, Roxas," Axel began with a heavy sigh, and Roxas fully expected him to make up an excuse or change the subject, so he was entirely unprepared when Axel continued, "that is because I'm crazy."

Roxas stared at him, waiting for a laugh or a grin or something, but Axel just stared back with an utterly woebegone expression. Like he was serious.

"What?" Roxas said. "I –"

"Because I'm crazy, Roxas!" Axel interrupted, jerking suddenly forward in his chair like he was going to jump up but had changed his mind. "_Crazy_. As in, crazy enough to pick up a poor traumatized kid from the sidewalk, take him home, and then decide it would be a fantastic idea to make a move on him. C-R-A-Z-Y. Fucking _batshit_."

For a moment Roxas just watched him, stunned, as he slumped forward with his forehead against the table in a fit of apparent self-hatred, narrowly missing the empty soup bowl in front of him.

"Of course you're crazy," Roxas said finally.

Axel lifted his head a few inches from the table to stare miserably at him, like Roxas had just confirmed his worst fear.

"But not like that. Not necessarily in a bad way." He paused. "Or a good way. Just – in an _Axel_ way," Roxas went on, and wondered if he was making any sense at all. "And by the way, I'm pretty sure _I_ was the one who made the move on _you_."

Axel seemed to brighten slightly at this, but then his face fell again. "Only because you probably have, like, Stockholm Syndrome or something."

Roxas frowned. "I don't know what that is, but I don't think I have it."

"Basically it's when a kidnapping victim develops feelings of affection toward their captor."

"Okay, I definitely don't have that. You are not my _captor_," Roxas said, starting to feel a headache coming on and finding it vaguely intriguing that a person could actually get a headache out of pure exasperation.

"I might as well be," Axel said with a dramatic sigh, propping up an elbow and leaning his chin on his palm. "You have nowhere else to go. You're stuck with me."

Roxas snorted. "I'm not_ that_ isolated. I have Namine's number…I even know a few people around town now…" This was stretching the truth considerably – he now knew the mailman and the manager of the coffee shop, sort of – but whatever. "I could leave if I really wanted to."

"You don't have any money. Or an identity."

"I could figure something out." Roxas met his gaze, and for a few seconds he forgot what he was talking about because of those eyes, toxic green and bright and overflowing with a painful mixture of fear and hope.

"You know," Axel said after a tense pause, "I think I really suck at this whole dating thing."

Roxas gave a laugh that was more of an exhale of relief. "Kind of. But it's okay. The bread's good."

Axel glanced at Zexion, who was passing by their table again, and said loudly, "Probably because of the _crack._"

He dodged just in time to avoid the spoon hurtling toward his face.

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_I could leave if I really wanted to,_ Roxas had said.

Which implied that he didn't want to leave. Axel turned this idea over and over his mind, thrumming with a weird kind of energy the whole drive home and nearly hitting two mailboxes and three pedestrians. _Roxas wants to stay. Roxas wants to stay. Roxas wants to stay. _It was impossible, unthinkable, but there it was.

The jubilation he felt upon this discovery lasted right up until he entered his house and found his cell phone on the table, declaring that he had forty-three missed calls and seven voicemails.

"Oh, shit," he said, staring wide-eyed at the phone as Roxas came up curiously beside him. "Namine."

"You think Demyx told her about yesterday?" Roxas guessed, not sounding nearly as terrified as he was supposed to sound, seeing as Namine was clearly going to tear Axel limb from limb. That quiet artist thing was all a joke; Axel knew that she could easily destroy entire cities if she had the inclination.

"Oh, I'm sure he went straight to her and ran his idiotic mouth," Axel muttered, flipping the phone open and flinching when it flashed "MISSED CALL!" at him repeatedly.

"You should probably just talk to her," Roxas suggested, still looking all happy and bright-eyed from their outing, which was kind of absurdly adorable but also terribly foolish, so very foolish, because any minute now Namine was going to unleash a reign of terror that would slaughter millions.

"I know, I really should," Axel sighed. He went to the kitchen window, pushed it open, and stretched his arm back to fling the phone out into the snow.

"Hey!" Roxas caught him by the sleeve just in time, yanking his arm away and hurrying to slam the window shut.

So naturally, Axel instead attempted to toss the thing into the sink, which was half-filled with water. Roxas reacted to this like a_ psychotic little freak _by practically tackling him to the ground, which fucking _hurt_, because it was fucking _stone tile_.

"No! It's for the good of the world!" Axel yelled, rolling around to try to get Roxas off of him, to no avail. What the hell was that about? Was Roxas secretly a pro-wrestler or something? "You don't understand! We're all going to die!"

"Look," Roxas said, panting as he fought to catch hold of the phone, "if we're really '_doing_ something here', like you said this morning – then you're going to have to tell her eventually, right?"

Axel shook his head frantically, lying flat on his back now with Roxas on top of him, one small, bony knee digging painfully into Axel's stomach. He held the phone tight to his chest while Roxas's fingers scrabbled uselessly at his clasped hands. "No! No! It'll be fine! I'll – I'll tell her you ran away and joined the circus and now you train elephants for a living and you can just live upstairs in the attic and she'll never know and everything will be _fine_, Roxas! Everything will be _fine!_"

Roxas looked thoughtfully at him for a moment. Then, with the hint of a smirk that should have tipped Axel off immediately, he slowly lowered his face closer to Axel's. "Of course, Axel," he murmured, "that's a great idea." And he pressed his lips to Axel's, and Roxas tasted like a terrible, wonderful mixture of mocha cappuccino and soup and strawberries – and Axel, almost forgiving him for the tackle-to-the-ground thing now, reached up to net his fingers in that ridiculously messy blond hair –

Which sent the phone clattering to the floor. Roxas lunged and snatched it, bolting upright before Axel could make sense of what had just happened. When his brain finally caught up several long seconds later, he stumbled to his feet and stood there gaping stupidly.

"What the fuck was that?" he finally managed with a glare.

Roxas just gazed coolly back at him. "Axel," he said, "do you want this to happen or not? Because if –"

Axel cut him off with a frustrated growl. "Yeah, yeah, I get it, cut the daytime drama bullshit and give me the phone."

Roxas flipped the phone open, pressed a few buttons, and handed it to Axel, who cringed when he heard Namine's ringback tone. "Bad Romance" just seemed so…horribly inappropriate at the moment. But he didn't have to listen to it for long.

"Hello, Axel," Namine said in what was possibly the iciest tone of voice she had ever used with him.

"You sound like an evil villain on a children's television show," Axel informed her. Roxas stifled a laugh beside him. Why, why, _why _did he say these things? They just leapt straight out of his mouth without ever consulting his brain.

"Demyx told me something surprising today," Namine said, ignoring his idiocy as per usual.

"What?" asked Axel. "That he's finally doing something with his life?"

"Of course not," she said. "No, do you know what he told me? In his exact words?"

Axel gritted his teeth. "Obviously not," he said.

Namine spoke in her best Demyx impression, which wasn't too far off. She got the whiny third-grader thing down perfectly. "'Dude, you'll never guess what I just saw! Axel was totally making out with some blond kid who looked like he was like fourteen! They were all over each other! It was frickin' crazy!'"

Axel made a mental note to strangle Demyx to death at the next opportunity. "Okay," he said, forcing himself to remain calm. "Oookay. That was a _highly _inaccurate account. That was like one of those 'based on a true story' shows on TLC where the true story is like, 'this one time, a dog fell in a puddle', and then the show is about a dog fighting the raging currents of the ocean plus eight pirate ships in order to save a mother duck and her twelve ducklings, one of which is ugly but becomes beautiful at the end as a result of a combination of plastic surgery and believing in herself."

"So to clarify, you're saying you weren't making out with Roxas," Namine said, and he could hear the warning in her voice.

He hesitated. That was his first mistake. His second mistake was replying with, "No…well…maybe a little bit?"

And thus began the yelling.

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The Great Namine Confrontation wasn't nearly as bad as Axel had led Roxas to anticipate it being. Sure, there were a few desperate protestations on Axel's part – "Namine, please, I swear to god I'm not a sexual predator!" – but most of it was Axel pacing quietly and saying, "Yeah. I know. Okay," every so often while Namine, assumedly, lectured him. And to Roxas's considerable relief, it didn't seem to actually require any involvement on his part at all.

Although at one point Axel did turn an accusatory finger on Roxas and declared dramatically, "It was all his fault! He started it!", which Roxas calmly refuted, citing the earlier "I like you" incident. Overall, though, it didn't seem to be a particularly life-threatening conversation, and when it was all over Roxas flatly informed Axel that he was a total wuss.

"You don't know what you're talking about," Axel grumbled. "Namine has evil powers. And she's killed tons of people. With her bare hands."

"No, she hasn't," Roxas sighed from where he was stretched out on the couch. His stomach was full, the phone call had been made, and Moo was curled up against his chest. A great contentment the likes of which he wasn't sure he had ever felt before in his life was now washing over him, muting the sharper edges of his thoughts. He felt – safe. And he knew that at least half of that probably had to do with the fact that Axel was sitting on the floor right beside the couch, a mass of spiky red hair blocking Roxas's view of the television, which was softly playing some nature documentary.

"She's savage," Axel insisted sulkily, but without much conviction.

Roxas reached out to lay a hand on his head, the stiff spikes of hair reminding him bizarrely of giant toothbrush bristles.

After a moment Axel's hand reached up and found his. It wasn't exactly the most comfortable of positions for either of them, Axel stretching up and Roxas stretching down, but they stayed that way for a long time anyway. Right up until Roxas, soothed by the bread in his stomach and the quiet droning of the television, drifted off to sleep.

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_There was a woman sleeping on the half-rotted floorboards under a thin blanket, and he was worried because it was cold – always so goddamn cold here – so he knelt down beside her, trying to see her face, but it was hidden by her hair, golden and long and still pretty even now when the rest of her was wasting away. She had always been beautiful; he remembered that now. She had always carried a certain beauty with her regardless of the ugly reality of what she was._

_ "Hey," he whispered, caught by a sudden fear. "Are you – are you okay?"_

_ She didn't move, didn't respond, and his heart sank. He reached out a shaking hand to move her hair – gingerly, like touching a wound. It fell softly from her thin, pale face in a curtain of gold and her eyes stared up at him, wide and blue and vacant –_

NO NO NO NO –

_ He let out a strangled cry and threw himself backward into the wall, scrambled to get _away_ –_

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Roxas shot upright and staggered to his feet, gasping for air that his lungs wouldn't hold. Searing pain shot through his chest. He was drowning, he was dying –

"Roxas?" And Axel was there – of course he was – a blurred shape of red hair and green lights for eyes – Roxas reached for him and practically fell upon him, gripping onto Axel's arms to brace himself. He took gulping, gasping breaths, his body rattling with tremors that wouldn't stop, nausea swelling in his stomach. It took him a moment to realize that everything was blurry because there were tears in his eyes.

"Hey – Roxas – easy, man, take it easy," Axel said from light years away. His voice was calm and steady though and despite the distance Roxas's ears zeroed in on the sound. He struggled to pay attention, to comprehend more than just noise.

"…colors of the rainbow," Axel was saying. "We're gonna talk through them, okay? Picture them. One by one. Okay? Start with red."

He eased Roxas down into a sort of sitting, sort of sprawling position, which was hard because Roxas couldn't release the death grip he had on Axel's arms. He tipped forward, his forehead against Axel's chest but he didn't care, it didn't matter, he couldn't breathe – he was dying –

"Come on, Roxas," Axel's voice came to him, cool and soothing, from another world. "Red. Picture red."

Red, he thought, grasping desperately for the word, the _concept_. Red. And he looked up at Axel's hair.

"What's next?" Axel prompted.

"Orange," Roxas gasped, forcing the word out. He thought of Finster, and his breathing slowed just a little.

"Good," Axel said, "good. Now what?"

"Yellow," he said, thinking of the Pineapple Pony Punch.

"Awesome, you got this. Keep going."

"Green." Axel's eyes. "Blue." His mother's eyes –

Roxas gave a sharp gasp and dug his fingers into Axel's arms, trying to stop the world from spinning.

"Easy," Axel said, and Roxas heard the worry in his voice now. "Come on, Rox, what's next? What's next?"

Roxas shook his head no, no, no and tried hard not to vomit in Axel's lap. "She's dead," he choked out, and it felt like it took all the energy he had just to find enough breath for these few words. "My mom's dead."

"Rox? Roxas!" he heard Axel call, but he was slipping away now, too far gone.

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Poor Roxas. By the way, the colors of the rainbow thing that Axel's doing there is a grounding technique that's supposed to help calm a person who's having a panic attack.

Also, as a side note that has nothing to do with Roxas angst, I have no idea if there actually exists a restaurant called the Polka Dot Pony, but if so, I was totally not stealing their name and they definitely shouldn't sue me or anything. And I sort of want to apologize to Zexion because I have no idea what possessed me to be so cruel to him here. Stuffing him in a frilly polka-dotted shirt and all that… just terrible. Oh well.

Thank you for reading and as always I'd love to hear what you think!

Stay tuned for Chapter Seven…in which you're gonna get more freaking angst. Darn. Sorry about that. It won't all be angsty, I promise.


	7. Chapter Seven: Okay

Chapter Seven is finally done! Thank you so much for the reviews on the last chapter; I tried to respond to most of them. I hope you enjoy Chapter Seven.

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Axel dug his cell phone out of his pocket with a shaking hand, the other hand at Roxas's back – Roxas, who was slumped forward against his chest, who had been shaking in his arms seconds earlier but was now almost unnaturally still. He fumbled with the buttons on his phone and dialed the wrong number three times before he remembered that Namine was on speed dial.

The phone went straight to voicemail.

"Goddamn fucking shit motherfucker," Axel said after the tone, then tossed the phone aside. He stared at it and tried to think of anyone else in the world other than 9-1-1 paramedics who would be of any use in this situation. Unfortunately Axel knew exactly one useful person in the entire world – two years of isolation would do that to you – and she was currently so angry with him that she had made herself virtually unreachable.

He sighed and carefully moved Roxas so that he was lying down, grabbing a pillow from the couch to prop under his head. Roxas didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow. Axel tried to remember what he knew about panic attacks and hyperventilation but his mind just kept going blank and he wondered if he was having his own little mental-breakdown-by-association or something.

"Get a fucking hold of yourself, dumbass," he muttered, and picked up the phone again, scrolling through his contacts. He paused on Demyx's name, considering. But what use would that idiot be? He'd probably just get himself shocked again.

There _was _Zexion. His shift was probably over by now, right? Granted, Axel hadn't actually talked to the guy in forever, and he _had_ tried to kill Axel with a spoon earlier, but that wasn't as bad as the time with the bread knife. Plus, he was _calm_. Axel, who felt just a little bit like he was on the verge of exploding into a million (horrible, bloody) pieces, thought with the last rational corner of his brain remaining that he could probably use some stability right now. And Zexion was so fucking calm that he could probably be covered in fire ants and not bat an eyelash – which was all the more impressive because the guy had really girly eyelashes, practically made for batting.

He stopped on Zexion's name and hit the call button. Zexion, unlike Namine, had a perfectly sensible, old school ringback tone that actually sounded like a _phone ringing_ and for some reason the familiarity of it soothed Axel just a little.

"Axel?" came Zexion's tired voice after precisely three rings. "I thought you agreed last time that from now on you would direct your concerns to the local fire department…"

"No, no, nothing's on fire," Axel said hurriedly, blinking away memories of flaming toasters. "I just – you know that kid I was with today?" Kid. He'd called him kid. It was hard not to, though, when Roxas was lying there all vulnerable like that.

"Roxas," Zexion said.

"Yeah," Axel said, and the words flew from his mouth in a breathless rush. "He – he's not feeling so hot, Zex, and I – I don't really know what the fuck I'm doing and Namine's not picking up and Demyx, no offense, is a complete retard in these situations, and I just need somebody to come here just in case something – happens – or, or whatever, you know? So – so I thought I'd call you, y'know, because of your eyelashes, right? And I was just wondering are you busy right now because you can't be because you need to be here now, okay?"

There was a pause. "My…eyelashes?" Zexion repeated, a note of confusion in his voice.

"Are you coming or not?" Axel snapped. "Because if not then I'm driving to Namine's and burning down her apartment building."

He made a faintly disapproving noise. "I fail to see how that would –"

"Zexion," Axel said, wincing at the desperation in his own voice. "Please."

At this Zexion went quiet. Axel never said please if it didn't involve caffeinated beverages. To anyone. Ever.

"We hadn't spoken in nearly a year until you rudely antagonized me at my work place this afternoon, and now you want me to drive to your house after working all day in order to help you look after your sick boyfriend," Zexion finally said, as though he were merely making sure he had the facts straight.

"Is that a yes?" Axel prodded, heart beating fast, fingers drumming in a hectic rhythm on the floor beside Roxas's head.

"Fine," Zexion sighed after a long moment. "I can be there in fifteen minutes."

"Great. Bring me some Valium or something because I think I'm going to have a heart attack," Axel instructed, only vaguely listening to his own words.

"No," Zexion replied, and hung up.

Axel frowned and set the phone aside. For a while he just stared at Roxas's pale face, at the downward curve of his lips, the slightly furrowed brow. He stared and he thought about how people left and how people died and how they never came back.

"Stop," he muttered to Roxas, or maybe just at Roxas; he wasn't sure. "Stop it."

And, as if in answer, Roxas's eyelids fluttered open.

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It didn't feel like waking up so much as crashing into consciousness – a head-on collision. …_Head_-on. Ha. Freaking hilarious.

"That's a song," Roxas said weakly to no one in particular, in between gasps for air.

"What is?"

He tilted his head up to see Axel kneeling over him and looking terrified, which wasn't a good look for him, not that Roxas figured it was a good look for anyone, but still, but still –

"Head-on Collision," Roxas said, fighting to get the words out because it was very important, clearly, to tell Axel this inane fact. "It's a song. Whiny emo band. My friend used to listen –" He stopped, his breath catching inexplicably, and descended into a coughing fit. Or maybe this was more like choking. Either way he was forced to double over as his body did its best to evacuate his organs.

_Not my lungs, please,_ he thought as he tried to draw breath. _I need those right now._

"Roxas," Axel's voice came from across some vast divide – the Grand Canyon flashed inexplicably into Roxas's mind; had he ever been there? – and his hand was at Roxas's back, helping him sit up. "Roxas, look at me, okay? Look at me."

He did. Axel's eyes burned into him, poisonous green and strangely grounding. Roxas gave a shuddering gasp and began to breathe in and out more slowly, more steadily, concentrating on Axel's face and wondering how a person's eyes could _burn_ like that.

"Shhh," Axel said. "It's okay. You're okay."

"No," Roxas choked out when he found that he still did, in fact, have the ability to speak. "I'm not."

"Pretend, then," Axel said, and Roxas stared at him incredulously. Axel half-smiled and gave a shrug. "Fake it 'till you make it, right?"

For a moment Roxas just continued to stare in utter disbelief, but then a weak smile flickered across his face, there and gone within seconds.

"You're an idiot," he said, feeling a rush of affection for Axel, who did not seem to find this news surprising.

"I know," he said in a low, soothing voice. "It's because you don't let me have coffee."

Roxas let out a laugh at that – a hollow, painful sound that felt all wrong, and in that moment of laughter he lost the tenuous grasp he'd had on his sanity.

And suddenly out of_ freaking nowhere_ he was crying on Axel's shoulder. Actually crying on his shoulder. You couldn't really get more pathetic than that, could you? But Roxas hardly had any energy left to spare for embarrassment – every breath was an effort, and when he closed his eyes in an attempt to retreat from what was happening all he saw was her empty gaze again and he felt like the world was closing in around him, tunneling him in so that all he could see was _her_.

Axel seemed to have frozen for a second, but then his arms fell gently around Roxas, drawing him in close. "You're all right," he said, and some part of Roxas registered that he sounded as scared as he'd looked. "Easy. You're all right. We're gonna figure this out."

Roxas started to respond when there was a light cough from the hallway. His head snapped up with a painful jerk.

There in the living room entrance stood – of all people – Zexion.

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Generally speaking, Axel was not good at the whole crying thing. Either doing it or dealing with it or talking about it or merely being in the presence of it. So while he was doing his best to not be a complete failure at comforting Roxas, he was extremely grateful for Zexion's abrupt appearance in his house. (Although seriously, it should be illegal to be that weirdly quiet. Did he teleport in or something? At least Demyx would have made some sort of noise – you know, like a normal human being.)

"What's…why's he here?" Roxas asked, straightening and composing himself with surprising speed. Axel wondered if he'd had any practice at that. He didn't seem like the crying-alone-in-his-room type, but you never knew.

"Because you scared the living shit out of me," Axel replied, "and Namine wasn't picking up."

Roxas frowned at him. Like he was disappointed in him, like he thought Axel should have been able to handle everything on his own instead of calling Zexion the Robot Waiter to come help. Or maybe it was just a frown and Axel was reading into it too much. That was also a possibility.

Zexion gave that annoying fake cough again as if to remind Axel – who was gazing intently at Roxas's face in a highly illogical attempt to discern whether or not he was being too intent on Roxas's face – that he was in fact still there. "Do you need anything?" he asked.

"A glass of water," Axel said, then looked back at Roxas. "Anything else? Food?"

Paling, Roxas shook his head quickly. "Nauseous," he mumbled.

"Oh. Waiter!" Axel called.

Zexion stopped on his way to the kitchen and directed an angry glare at Axel. "Do _not _call me that," he snapped.

Well, that was interesting. So Zexion_ could_ feel emotions. Or at least he could feel anger. Maybe he wasn't really a robot after all. Or maybe he was just a really angry robot.

"Right, right, whatever," Axel said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Can you get Roxas some saltines?"

"Of course," Zexion said with a polite nod toward Roxas, who continued to appear slightly stunned at the fact that Zexion existed outside of the Polka Dot Pony.

Roxas watched Zexion disappear into the kitchen, then let out the breath he had evidently been holding. "Sorry," he said, so quietly that Axel almost didn't catch it. He was staring at the floor.

Axel blinked. "For what?"

"Making you freak out. Having random meltdowns. Being crazy," Roxas said with a casual shrug.

"How many times do I have to tell you, Rox?" Axel sighed. "You're not –"

"Then _what is this?_" Roxas interrupted, fixing Axel suddenly with a fierce gaze. He was almost snarling. "Then what the fuck's happening to me? Don't even _try_ to tell me this is normal."

Axel was, as always, distracted and transfixed by those blue eyes. They were even more vividly blue now because of the crying and they made him think of the ocean which made him think of the tide tugging at his feet one cold February day while he stood there hand in hand with –

No. No random emotionally debilitating Isa memories. Not right now.

"Axel? Are you even listening to me?"

"Huh? Oh." It took him a moment to register what Roxas had said. When he did, he had just barely strung together a coherent response when Zexion came back with the water and a package of saltines.

"Zexion," Roxas said, redirecting his intensely determined gaze.

"Yes?" Zexion responded after a fraction of a second's pause, as though not used to others acknowledging his existence.

"Well, I was just wondering," said Roxas with remarkable equanimity, "if you woke up one day on the sidewalk without any memories of your past, and then a few weeks later you had a flashback in which you learned that your mother was dead, which then sent you into a complete panic attack, would you by any chance consider yourself to be crazy?"

Zexion, to his credit, only raised an inquiring eyebrow in response to this. "No," he replied. "However, I would, perhaps, consider myself traumatized."

Roxas, looking troubled again now – Axel wanted suddenly to hit Zexion – nodded slowly. "Thanks," he said, and took the proffered glass of water, ignoring the saltines.

Axel watched him raise the glass to his lips and noted the slight trembling of his wrist, the shadows that flickered in his eyes. Those eyes. The thought came from nowhere and socked him squarely in the stomach – _Those eyes will be my downfall. _

Only he was having trouble processing that ridiculously melodramatic little thought, because it was exactly at that moment that Roxas set down the glass and announced, "I have to go."

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Roxas's heart seemed to have decided to somersault nonstop until it exploded, or imploded, or whatever it was that nonstop somersaulting eventually led a heart to do. He heard himself speak and he felt each word wrench itself from his throat but at the same time some part of him was absolutely certain that he could not possibly be saying such a thing. No. Never.

Axel, judging by his look of utter bafflement, seemed to feel the same way. "Go…go where, Rox?" he said, his voice coming out dry and nervous.

Roxas pressed one hand briefly against his chest and wished it would stop pounding like that; it was really getting to be just plain annoying. "To Twilight Hollow. To my town."

At this Axel looked equal parts excited and panicked. "You remember? Do you remember all of it?"

He shook his head wearily. "I – remember my mom. The name of my town. And I – I had friends…" His voice nearly broke at the end of that sentence, an overwhelming feeling of loss rushing up over him, but he covered it with a cough.

"Okay," said Axel, nodding as though he were on board with this plan now. "Okay, so we'll –"

"Axel. No."

"No what?"

He didn't look at Axel. He couldn't look at Axel. "It's – it's just that…_I_ have to go."

For a moment no one spoke and Roxas was uncomfortably aware of Zexion watching them both coolly from a safe distance, like an officer bracing himself to break up an impending fist fight.

Then Axel stood abruptly. "You can't," he said in a voice firm with almost parental authority. "You don't have a car or money or anything."

Roxas forced himself to make eye contact and was disconcerted by Axel's unyielding gaze. "Axel –"

"You can't," Axel repeated, and then his expression softened. "Not right away. Look, Roxas, I know you just went through something really horrible and I know you're feeling kind of fucked up right now. And I'm sorry. I am. But you can't just go running off by yourself when you don't know what you're running to." He paused, but Roxas didn't challenge him. "We'll figure this out – I _promise_ I'll help you figure this out. But we should wait until morning when you're feeling better and I'm not exhausted and Zexion the Robot isn't in our house."

Roxas looked helplessly to Zexion (who didn't seem all that robotic, but Axel had a tendency to over exaggerate about everything he came into contact with).

But Zexion, seeming to understand the meaning of his gaze, shook his head. "For once, Axel is being logical," he said, looking somewhat pained at this admission. "You recently had a panic attack. You are not thinking rationally, but rather relying on an emotional response to guide you in your decisions. It would be best to go to sleep and think about this in the morning." He paused, then added in a more dismissive tone, "Also, I'm not a robot."

Roxas was sure his heart should have exploded/imploded/whatever by now, but it continued to pound mercilessly in his chest like it was training itself for the goddamn Organ Olympics. "Okay," he said, because what else could he say? He was no good at convincing people of stuff like this. He could fight his way through an argument just fine but he lacked the talent necessary to entirely change a person's mind – the way Axel tended to do on a daily basis before the victim of the moment even recognized what was happening.

No, Roxas was not particularly persuasive – but he was patient. And that, he thought grimly as he sipped his water in the ensuing silence, that was what made all the difference.

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"Here," Axel said a half hour or so later after Zexion had left, tossing Roxas a blanket from the guest room bed. He'd insisted that the both of them sleep in the living room so that Axel would be close by just in case Roxas had another flashback. Roxas would take the couch and Axel would sleep on the floor. And everything would be okay.

Okay, he mouthed to himself as he laid there on his back in the dark, because the word would not seem to stick. Okay. Okay. Okay.

But as he finally drifted off to sleep, he just kept thinking about how people left, and how people died, and how they never came back.

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Roxas waited until Axel's breathing finally slipped into a slow, easy rhythm before he risked sitting up. When Axel didn't react, he slid his legs carefully off of the couch. His feet touched down without a sound. There must have been some sort of spell cast over the place, because he made it to the kitchen in absolute silence. Even the usually rickety drawer made almost no noise when he slid it open to retrieve a sticky note and a pen. His hands shook and he went through seven sticky notes before he finally got it right.

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Axel,

I had to go. Sorry. Don't freak out. Don't call the cops. Don't forget to feed the cats in the afternoon because lately I've been doing that. Don't forget to wash your paint brushes or they'll get ruined again. Don't forget to turn the TV off at night.

Don't forget I like you. I do. I still do.

— R.

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t b c.

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End Notes:

Well, that chapter was incredibly stressful to write. Yay…? I _have_ tried to be as realistic as possible as far as the psychological stuff goes, but of course I've been taking a little artistic liberty from the very beginning with the amnesia thing.

A side note – I'm back at college now and in some writing intensive classes. So while I will do my very best to update this fic regularly – because I truly do love this story and these characters to death – I'm just warning you that updates _might_ be less frequent.

Aaaanyway, I'd love to hear from you, you people who read this thing – opinions, suggestions, random exclamations, whatever! And stay tuned for Chapter Eight in which…well, you'll find out.


	8. Chapter Eight: Starry Night is Overrated

So…hey guys! Sorry for the crazy delay. This story has turned out to be bigger than I originally planned on it being – I thought I'd be able to wrap it up in ten to twelve chapters. Yeah, turns out that's not gonna happen. Because Axel and Roxas suck and I hate them. Which is why I'm writing a big long story about them, _obviously._

Anyway, again thanks so so so much for your reviews and support and whatnot, and I sincerely hope you enjoy reading Chapter Eight.

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"The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking."

- Stanley Kunitz

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He's seventeen and it's the thirteenth time he's run away, so he's pretty good at it by now. He knows how to make himself disappear, how to erase any hint of a trail so that his own mother has no clue as to his whereabouts. Mom doesn't have a clue about much, but it's not her fault. She's busy. She teaches middle school cooking classes and there are lesson plans to do and cooking safety quizzes to grade and it's not her fault if Axel sometimes drops off the face of the planet because that is not how she raised him, most certainly not.

For example, she did not raise her son to steal money from her purse and use it to buy a train ticket to Twilight Hollow. She did not raise her son to stand shivering in the February air as cold salt water slips over his bare feet. And she definitely did not raise her son to collapse on his back in the sand and stare at the sky like it's got something he really, really wants, like he's just trying to figure out how to take it.

"You know, you're gonna end up spending more time in detention than you ever would in class if you keep skipping school like this."

Axel looks up, unsurprised, because there is only one person who would know to look for him here. There is only one person who understands that there is something in Axel's heart that craves an endless horizon, an eternity of blue water to flood through the cracks inside of him until every empty space is filled.

And so Isa's appearance is not a twist in this story, just an inevitability.

"Not if I don't show up to the detentions," Axel says idly, sitting up.

Isa sighs and sits down beside him in the sand. "You're not gonna graduate at this rate."

"Who says I wanna graduate?" Axel scoffs.

Isa rolls his eyes, but he doesn't say anything. They've had this argument so many times and they're both tired of repeating the same old words again and again. Instead they share a rare moment of silence, staring out at the sea, and it's all very romantic and shit until Isa goes and ruins it as usual.

"Come on," he says, shifting restlessly. "Let's go back."

"To what?" Axel retorts. "Our warm and loving families? The ever-so-fabulous public school system?" Axel leans his head on Isa's shoulder, partially because he just feels like it and partially as a calculated move to weigh him down. "Let's just stay here, Isa," he murmurs. "Let's just stay." And he doesn't quite know if he means for now or for forever.

Isa sighs again and shifts to put an arm around Axel's shoulders, drawing him in close. "Fine. Just for a little while."

When it's finally time to go, Axel turns to look at the footprints they've left behind and a part of him aches. He will cling to this memory for years – that vast expanse of water, the scent of salt and fish, the sound of ocean waves and Isa's breathing. Years later he still wakes up every now and then with the roar of the ocean in his ears, salt air on his tongue, the remnants of an ache in his chest.

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Roxas had been on a train once before. He knew this because as he stepped onto the platform, he had a sudden recollection of being on a padded bench, staring out the window at scenery flying by too quick to capture a clear image. He remembered, also, a flash of light – a camera – and then laughter. It wasn't much, but as he stood there gripping his ticket tight in his hands, he clung just as tightly to that wispy memory. He had been on a train once. There was proof. Someone had taken a picture.

He wondered what kind of picture he made now. Nervous, jittery even, dressed in a coat eight sizes too big for him, the faint outline of a bruise around his eye and barely scarred cuts still visible on his face – he probably looked like a drug addict or something, Roxas thought darkly. Something in his mind tripped and stumbled over that thought.

"Get a grip," he mumbled to himself, and waited for the train to come.

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Axel skidded into the parking lot, ricocheting off the curb and nearly smashing his side mirror against a poorly placed tree. Bessie wasn't the greatest mode of transportation in the best of circumstances, and the ground was basically a gigantic sheet of ice at the moment due to the lovely winter the Northeast had been having. Despite this complication he managed somehow to wrangle his old station wagon into a parking spot without decimating any of the other cars.

Namine's apartment building loomed before him, fancy and foreboding. He'd been here a total three times over the years and had only ever stayed for an hour or so – with the notable exception of the day of Isa's funeral, which he had spent sitting in Namine's bathtub with the door locked and a sketchbook propped on his knees. He'd been drawing birds.

He could still hear Namine's voice, broken and tired and desperately pleading, "Axel, come out. It's time to go."

"Not yet," he'd told her. "I'm working on the feathers." Eventually she had given up and left without him. When she returned he'd drawn seventeen of them, seventeen birds, all flying away from the paper like they couldn't bear to be confined to two dimensions. He showed her the sketchbook and she hugged him and cried into his shirt.

Bessie rattled sadly when he got out and slammed the car door, looking sorely out of place amongst all the sleek sportscars and hybrids. Axel gave his clanking old death trap a pat on the hood.

"You're better than them," he told her. "You're better than all of them."

Clank, replied Bessie, and Axel wondered briefly what had fallen off of his car this time. He gazed up at the cloud-thick sky for a moment, thinking of feathers. Then, with a deep, steadying breath, he walked toward the building.

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Roxas's stomach was growling. He frowned and rested his hand on it, thinking wistfully of Axel's pancake breakfasts – which of course led to thinking about Axel, which led to trying not to think at all. He closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the cushioned seat.

The train hurtled along and Roxas was somehow comforted by its rattling rhythm. He burrowed deeper into Axel's coat and fingered the five dollar bill in his pocket – all that was left after the bus ride to the train station and then the train fare to Twilight Hollow. Axel always seemed to leave money lying around in his pockets, and Roxas had been lucky enough to pick a coat with two twenties crumpled in the right hand pocket.

Lucky, he told himself. You're lucky.

Except that when he wasn't feeling hunger pangs he was feeling a sickly, lurching feeling, like missing a step on a staircase, like leaving behind a safe place and rushing straight into the unknown. And that didn't feel much like luck.

It felt like losing.

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"I don't want to talk to you," Namine snapped the moment she opened the door. He noted vaguely that she was dressed in the Spongebob Squarepants pajamas he'd gotten her for her birthday last year, which she had at the time declared "hideous" and "unwearable."

Axel threw his foot onto the flowered welcome mat before she could shut the door. "You don't even know what I want to talk about," he said. His voice came out weird and wavery but he clung to some desperate scrap of hope that she hadn't noticed.

However, judging by the way she was looking at him, she'd noticed. He frowned and resisted the impulse to run for cover from the motherly expression that was quickly replacing her confusion.

"What happ –" Namine started, but Axel cut her off.

"I need to borrow your car."

She stared at him.

He shifted from foot to foot like a deranged rocking chair. "I just need your keys. I'll be right back, I swear – it's just that Bessie's no good in this weather and your car's got snow tires, right, and I just need to take it to Twilight Hollow and back – it's only two hours, not a big deal or anything –"

"Axel," Namine interrupted. "Come inside."

His first impulse was to knock her down and flail wildly into the apartment in search of her car keys. However, he had learned over the past twenty years that his first impulses were hardly ever advisable or, a vast majority of the time, legal. Besides, she was wearing her Do Not Fucking Argue With Me expression and so Axel felt compelled to follow her reluctantly into the apartment.

It was small but clean – pristine, really. Almost everything was white. Nothing was bent or broken or covered in cat hair or obtained at four in the morning from a rummage sale run by nutjob insomniacs, as was the case for much of Axel's furniture. He shuddered at the _purity_ of it all and walked slowly into what appeared to be Mr. Clean's living room. Maybe this was the reason he hadn't been here very often; he couldn't take a step without feeling like he was about to break or horribly ruin something with his mere presence.

"I really won't be long," he tried again half-heartedly, avoiding eye contact because if he looked her in the eyes she would know everything. "If you could just give me your keys…"

Namine led him into the kitchen, heading straight for the coffee maker. Which was also white. What the hell. He eyed the thing with an odd mixture of scorn and longing but averted his eyes when he noticed Namine glancing at him suspiciously as she flicked the on switch, like he was going to take the appliance and run. He was considering it, actually, but there were more pressing matters to attend to first.

"I'll pay for gas," he said, looking determinedly at a point above her head.

"Sit down," she replied, pointing at a chair. She had one of those modern-ish kitchen tables, circular and silvery white with weirdly rounded chairs to match.

Axel frowned at them. "I'm not hip enough for those chairs," he said. "Besides, I only came over to borrow your –"

"Axel. Look at me."

And, because he was an idiot, he did. He was startled to see that she was not actually glaring at him as he had assumed; she was in fact looking at him like he'd acquired some terrible illness.

But there was no concern in her voice, only stern authority. "You are not borrowing my car," she told him. "You are sitting down. Sit on the floor if that's what you want. But _sit down._"

He pulled out a chair, blinked at it warily, and sat.

"Good," said Namine, standing there with her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed. Even in the Spongebob pajamas she looked formidable. "Now tell me what happened."

"Nothing happened."

"You just offered to pay for gas. Something happened."

Axel sighed. "You asked me – before – when we were –" He stopped, shook his head in frustration at his sudden inability to talk, and started again, more smoothly this time. "You asked me what I would do if he left."

Comprehension fell across Namine's face, sweeping away all traces of anger. "Oh, Axel," she sighed.

He winced at the look on her face, at her pitying tone of voice, but soldiered on in the hopes that she would change her mind about how pathetic he was if he just kept talking, which didn't make sense, but hey, neither did life so it was fine.

"Well, here's what I'm doing," he said, and withdrew a small canvas from one of the pockets of his jacket. It was the size of an average paperback book and the paint was newly dried. It had been the colors that had given him the most trouble; he had worked hard to find the right ones. Clear sky-swallowing-ocean blue for the eyes and soft gold for the hair, like the wheat fields on the edge of town where suburbs gave way to farmland. It was one of his better works, especially for having been done purely from memory.

Namine gazed at it for a few seconds, apparently at a loss for words. "Is that…Roxas?" she asked at last, sounding utterly bewildered and maybe just a little concerned for his sanity. "You painted _Roxas?_"

"I don't have any photos," Axel explained. Apparently this wasn't explanation enough though, because Namine looked at him like she was considering having him committed. He frowned and tried again. "Look, I know he went to Twilight Hollow but I don't know _where_ in Twilight Hollow. So I'm gonna show this to people and be all, 'Hey, anyone seen a spiky-headed little sarcasm-machine?' And then they'll be like, 'Yeah totally, I just saw him sulking over there by the ice cream shop like five minutes ago.' And then I'm gonna find him, and I'm gonna bring him back home."

He leaned back in the hipster chair and waited for Namine to congratulate him on his brilliant plan.

However, she seemed to have doubts as to his brilliance. "First of all, that's creepy," she said. "Second of all, you'd be bringing him back to_ your_ home," she said, giving him that Oh My God You Must Be Terribly Sick in the Head look again. "Not his. You can't just _bring him back_. You're talking like he's a lost pet or something."

Axel scowled. "I am not."

"You are too," Namine said, sitting down in the chair across from him and looking him in the eyes.

He winced, recognizing the signs of an impending Lecture of Doom and leaned across the kitchen table. "Namine, listen," he started, but she cut him off.

"No. Shut up and listen to me for once," she snapped, and he actually did shut up, taken aback by the venom in her voice. "You've pulled this crap for as long as I've known you. You attach yourself to people like they're anchors, and then the moment they leave you're fucked because there goes your center of gravity."

"Whatever, Sir Isaac Newton," Axel muttered with a pointed roll of his eyes, but Namine ignored his wonderfully clever and scientific reference.

"_This_ is why I told you not to get attached to Roxas. _This_ is why you can't just settle down like a normal _person_ – because every minute of your day has to revolve around someone or you end up running in circles like an Axel-tornado."

"That's not true," Axel said, which was a lie.

"Oh, yeah?" Namine replied, raising her eyebrows. "Do you have any concept of how you behave? Do you have _any _idea what it's been like to be around you since Isa –"

"Stop," Axel cut across, his voice edged with warning. "I don't want to talk about Isa, okay? This isn't about Isa."

"_Everything_ is about Isa," Namine replied, relentless. "He was your first boyfriend. He was the first person you loved."

"Don't –"

"He was the first person you lost."

"_I know he was!_" Axel snarled, his voice accidentally rising to a shout. He took a breath and repeated in slightly calmer tones, "I know he was. I was_ there._ I don't need to fucking talk about –"

"He _died_, Axel."

He stared at her, unable to speak, his heart gone heavy and cold and sick with a feeling that was not quite grief.

"He died," Namine repeated, softer this time. "And you never acknowledged it. You never even went to the funeral. You never said a damn thing to me or to Demyx or Zexion or _anyone_. Do you really think that's okay? Do you really think that's going to work?"

Axel stared at Namine for a long moment, struggling with the impulse to punch the table or the wall or her. "I told him," he said finally.

"Who?"

"Roxas. I told him. I told him everything."

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Roxas stepped off the train into a world he didn't recognize. He'd thought that he would; he'd thought that it would all come rushing back, but as he began to walk down the snow-covered sidewalk, squinting against the flurries, he was at a complete loss. There was _nothing_ here that he knew. Not the rows of small, crammed together ramshackle houses, not the street lamps, not the salt air, not even the openness of the sky. He worried with a flicker of fear that he had gotten off at the wrong spot, but the overhead speaker on the train had clearly announced, "Now arriving at Twilight Hollow." Maybe it was the snow. Maybe he wasn't used to seeing snow here.

He shook the snowflakes from his hair – a futile motion, seeing as his head was covered again within seconds – and trudged resolutely onward. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for. But he had to keep looking.

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Axel was aware of Namine's eyes on him but he was looking at the Van Gogh piece she had up on the wall above the kitchen table. Starry Night. Boring. Starry Night was everywhere these days. You could get it printed on mouse pads and coasters.

"You should be proud of me," Axel said after a tense pause, rapping his fingers on the table and looking back at her. "I'm opening up."

"But apparently only to Roxas," Namine said, sounding almost defeated. The coffee maker let out a low beep and she stood to attend to it.

"He kissed me," said Axel for no apparent reason. "Not the other way around."

"I know." Namine turned around with a mug in each hand and held one out toward him.

He took it cautiously. "It wasn't my idea," he said, then paused, frowning into the cup. "Is this decaf?"

"Fully caffeinated," Namine replied. "And I know it wasn't. I know. We talked about this."

"Why are you giving me caffeine?" Axel asked, casting her a suspicious glance.

"As consolation," she said, shrugging. "Comfort. I don't know."

"I don't need consolation. I need your car," Axel said, taking a sip of coffee anyway. It was cringe-inducingly bitter and scorching hot, exactly the way he liked it, and he wondered if she'd made it that way for him. "I only need it for like a day, and then –"

"Look outside," Namine said, gesturing toward the window. He followed her gaze to the barrage of snow now coming down and felt a twist of anxiety in his chest.

"I have to go," he said. "I have to find him. He's alone, he doesn't even remember specifics – there's no way he'll be okay on his own. I have to –"

"You have to stay here, at least for now," Namine said firmly, resting a hand on his shoulder – tentatively, like she was afraid he'd shake her off. "I'm not going to let you smash my car into a telephone pole just because you feel like being a reckless moron."

"But – Roxas," Axel said eloquently.

"Roxas is smart," Namine replied steadily. "He can take care of himself. He was practically taking care of you from what I could see."

Axel gave her a pained look. "He can't even do laundry."

Namine rolled her eyes. "Did you ever teach him how to use your washing machine?"

"I gave him the detergent and told him to figure it out," Axel admitted, "but still."

"He's nineteen," she said, "not five. He'll be okay. And he has your cell number – I'm sure he'll try to get in contact once he's figured things out."

"No you're not," Axel muttered.

Namine smiled tightly. "No, I'm not," she admitted. "But you could try having a little faith in someone for a change."

Axel sat there quietly for a moment. "Sorry," he said at last, and wasn't quite sure what he was apologizing for, only that he felt like he should. Maybe for sitting in her bathtub when he should've been sitting beside her at a funeral.

She squeezed his shoulder. "It's okay."

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Roxas couldn't have explained to anyone how he'd found the house. His feet had marched there as though of their own volition, had stopped at the front steps as though dragged down by an invisible magnet.

Home, he thought as he looked at the decrepit little one-story shack, at the cracked off-white siding and the chipped paint on the door. He tried to make the word stick to the building, but it kept sliding right off. The fact rested in his mind anyway, dry and indisputable. The sky was blue, the grass was green, this house was – had been – his home. The thought did not make him feel happy, or safe, or anything that he thought a home should feel like. Instead he felt his heart race madly in his chest and his head pound as though someone were slamming his skull repeatedly with a hammer. He took a shaky breath and walked up the steps, pushing open the front door to see –

Absolutely no one. Roxas's heart slowed just a bit as he stepped inside and peered around at the dark, sparsely furnished room, breathing in the stale air. _Okay_, he thought, _okay_. _This isn't so bad. This is all right. _

It wasn't until a few minutes later, when he was pacing cautiously around the living room, thatthe screaming started.

Roxas jumped about a foot backward and clamped his hands over his ears – but they wouldn't stop, wouldn't shut up, and it was only after he kept pressing his hands tight to his ears and nothing happened that he realized the screaming was in his head. He felt a familiar terror tearing at him, and he thought vaguely, stupidly – _I'm too tired for this I'm too tired I can't do this again_ – before a rush of images and voices – incomprehensible at first but increasingly clearer – overwhelmed him.

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_He found her after work. She was lying on the floor as she'd taken to doing lately, only this time she didn't answer him with even the faintest glance in his direction when he called out that he was home. _

_ When he touched her arm she was cold._

_ His father strode toward her with an air of morbid curiosity._

_ "Don't," Roxas said, his voice a rough whisper that gradually grew louder. "Don't. Don't touch her. Don't fucking touch her!" he screamed, wheeling around and staring wild-eyed at his father, fists clenched, tears blurring his vision. A kind of rage he had never felt before in his life pounded through him, and for a flash of a moment he thought, _This is how my dad feels all the time.

_ Then his father's fist slammed into his face with the force of a wrecking ball, and there was a kind of roaring in Roxas's ears that had nothing to do with the volume at which his father was screaming. He couldn't even make out the words._

_ His father hit him again, and again, and again, until he was thrown back against the wall. Roxas staggered to his feet, struggling for breath. "Stop," he gasped, his voice catching. "S-stop –" _

_ There was the sound of glass smashing and his eyes darted to the broken bottle in his father's hand. He tried to back away but he was already up against the wall, there was nowhere to run – the jagged edges of the bottle came closer until he felt them prick the skin below his aching left eye. His father was still screaming but Roxas didn't hear it, only heard the oceanic roar that filled his ears, his mind, his body – and then the broken glass dug into his skin and he was screaming too, he was screaming – _

_ Fighting – _

_ Running – running forever, until he felt like his body was being torn to pieces and he sat down on the sidewalk wherever he was, wherever, didn't matter – until he sat down and he shook and he breathed sharp and fast and terrified, until exhaustion overcame him and he was –_

_gone._

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Notes:

Right, so, cheerful chapter ending as always. Thank you very much for reading Chapter Eight and stay tuned for Chapter Nine, in which we'll meet Hayner! Pence! Olette!


	9. Chapter Nine: The Other Roxas

Hello! I'm back! And I am very very sorry for the delay! So sorry that I am using exclamation points quite liberally!

Seriously, to those of you who have stuck with this fanfic, thank you so much for waiting so long. Again, I promise that I will never abandon this fic. I may leave it for extended periods of time, but it will be finished. I swear upon the life of my Axel plushie. Updates should be especially more frequent now as it's summer break for me. Anyway, please enjoy Chapter Nine.

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There were pieces of reality that surfaced up in between the waves of darkness, strangely out of focus, like a bunch of scraped together scenes from a horrible low budget movie.

He was falling to his hands and knees on some random stretch of sidewalk, vomiting in the snow –

Stumbling forward, sharp bite of pain somewhere around his ankle, hand on his shoulder (_Axel?_) –

A voice (_not Axel_) saying his name over and over while he thought _I don't know you, I don't know you_, and maybe he'd said it aloud because the voice said, "'Course you do, Rox, don't mess around," sounding scared –

Being half-dragged through a doorway and out of the cold, elbow knocking against the wall as the voice called out for help –

Sitting down with two pills and a cup of water in his shaking hands, and someone was telling him, "It's Tylenol, Roxas, it'll help your ankle," and he stared at the little red pills_._

_ Come on, Roxas, _Axel's voice came suddenly into his head. _Red. Picture red._

Instead his vision went black.

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"Hi, Demyx," Namine said into the cell phone as she paced around the living room. "Just calling to ask a few questions… What? No, it's not about taxes. Why would I be asking you about taxes? Are you not paying your taxes? Demyx, I swear to god…"

Axel listened from the floor, where he was sprawled out staring listlessly at the ceiling. He kept telling himself he was being a fucking moron to get this freaked out over a kid he hardly knew, but then another part of him kept retorting, _Of course I know him. His favorite flavor of just about anything is strawberry. Moo is his favorite cat but he likes dogs more. When he brushes his teeth he spends forever on it like he's determined not to get a single cavity ever, but he almost never brushes his hair. He's afraid of robots, Brazilian wandering spiders, and of being alone. He likes reading the comics and the horoscopes in the newspaper before he reads the news. He likes action flicks and sappy romances but he pretends he likes that intellectual crap more. He likes to sleep with the blankets pulled up over his head. He likes reading Isa's old mystery novels. He likes sunny days and snowy nights. And – me._

"Okay," Namine was saying now, nodding with the same resigned expression she had worn throughout her earlier conversation with Zexion. "Okay, thanks anyway. Call me or Axel if you find anything out. And _pay your taxes_. No – no, it's not that hard, Demyx, not if you just go to work instead of blowing it off all the time for freaking _Guitar Hero_. Why do you think Zexion gets so mad at you? If you don't grow up he's never going to – okay. _Okay_, fine. Just call me if you hear anything."

She snapped the phone shut and sighed, looking at Axel, who blinked miserably back from his position on the floor. "Demyx doesn't know anything."

"What else is new?" Axel replied. He turned his gaze back to the ceiling and imagined painting it, curing it of its blank white banality. He'd use shades of gold, orange, pink – like a sunset. It'd be a never-ending sunset. Ridiculously romantic. Isa would've laughed at him. Even Roxas, who (if you judged by his taste in movies) was secretly sappy as hell, would've laughed at him. Axel's mouth twisted in an attempt at a smile, which turned instead into a grimace. He could feel Namine staring at him but he didn't look back.

"I'm gonna call my cousin Kairi," she said after a pause. "She lives in Twilight Hollow. She might know something."

"Call the coffee shop too," Axel said. "Just in case."

"What coffee shop?" Namine asked, sounding puzzled.

"The one you most recently banned me from. Around the corner from my house."

There was another pause, and then Namine said slowly, "I didn't ban you from that one. I had no idea that one existed."

"Then who –" Axel stopped, thinking suddenly of how Roxas had hurried away to sit down as soon as the barista refused to give Axel caffeine. How he had made suspicious coughing sounds that in retrospect may or may not have been hiding laughter. This time Axel actually did smile. "Manipulative little bastard," he muttered.

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Roxas woke up to three anxious faces peering over him. In other circumstances he probably would have been at least a little freaked out by this, but at the moment all he felt was an overwhelming numbness – and so he accepted this turn of events without much of a reaction. He looked from one face to another – there was a pensive brown-haired girl, a wiry blond guy who looked inexplicably like he sort of wanted to punch Roxas in the stomach, and another kinda pudgy dark-haired guy with deeply worried brown eyes. Roxas's gaze finally settled on the girl. There was something calming about the pale, sea glass green of her eyes. They were nothing like Axel's eyes, which _burned_ like they could singe straight through the ozone layer if they wanted to. Or through him. Neither scenario was comforting.

He let out a shaky breath, touching a hand to his forehead and closing his eyes briefly. He didn't want to think about Axel. He didn't want to think about anything, actually. If he just – just kept his eyes closed for a little while longer, maybe –

"C'mon already, Roxas," said a voice he was pretty sure he had heard earlier. So that part hadn't been a dream or a fucked up memory. Good to know.

He focused his gaze on the blond guy, whose eyes were still narrowed almost threateningly. "You've been out for hours. You gotta wake up now," he said, and Roxas noted the ill-concealed fear behind the boy's bravado.

Roxas sat up slowly, wincing at new bruises – had he fallen, or had that been a dream? – and blinked at the pink flowered bedspread he was lying on, then at the matching pink and yellow walls. "Where…is this?" he said. His tongue felt thick and heavy.

"My room," the girl answered, like it was perfectly natural to wake up in a stranger's bedroom. And hell, for him, maybe it was. This was the second time it had happened after all. "What happened, Roxas?" she asked urgently. "Where did you…"

He couldn't focus, couldn't concentrate on what she was saying, and her voice faded into the background while Roxas gazed around the room. There were photographs on the wall beside the bed, photos of the two guys and the girl, and someone else too, someone who looked a lot like –

He froze, staring.

"Who is that?" he asked at last, throat scratchy, looking at the three strangers in bewilderment.

The girl frowned. "_You_. Who else would it be, silly? Are you feeling okay? Do you have a fever or something?" She laid a hand on Roxas's forehead and he flinched.

"I don't think I know you," he said quietly. Her eyes widened, and she looked hurt.

"I told you, Pence!" the blond kid said, his harsh voice a sharp contrast to the girl's soft tones. "I _told_ you! He kept saying that when I found him. Maybe he hit his head. Hey, Roxas! Didja hit your head?"

"Shut up, Hayner!" the girl snapped. The blond kid frowned but obeyed, looking cowed. "Roxas?"the girl said hesitantly, turning back toward him. "Are you sure? Do you know my name?"

He shook his head. "Sorry," he told her, feeling a sudden guilt as he watched the hope disappear from her eyes.

"It's okay," she said, after a pause. "So…I'm Olette. The annoying one's Hayner and the quiet one's Pence. We're…well…um…"

"We're your friends," Pence said, blinking at him with wide, sincere brown eyes.

Roxas shifted, uncomfortable with the familiarity with which they were all looking at him. His head pounded and it took a moment for him to recall his ability to speak. "I've been…gone…a while," he said, still struggling to force his words into an order that made sense.

"No shit," Hayner snorted. "You know how long we've been looking for you? It's been _weeks_, man. Nobody knew where you went. We heard about your dad and we thought –" He stopped, his expression abruptly becoming unreadable, and shook his head. "I dunno what we thought."

"We thought you got hurt," Pence said, looking as uncomfortable as Roxas felt. "Or – um, or something."

Olette looked away, biting her lip, and Roxas looked up at the photos again. There was no getting around the fact that that was him, standing there and smiling with these people who were strangers to him now.

"Look," he said at last. "Can I just ask you something?"

Hayner only blinked at him but Pence and Olette nodded.

Roxas swallowed hard as the numbness began to fade and his heartbeat began to quicken. "Who exactly do you think I am?"

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Who exactly they thought he was turned out to be Roxas Tomianson, a nineteen-year-old high school graduate and lifetime resident of Twilight Hollow. Roxas Tomianson worked fulltime at a local hardware store to help support his mother, who, as Olette delicately put it, was "a little bit troubled." His father was, as Hayner not-so-delicately put it, "an alcoholic douchebag" and according to the local papers had recently driven his car into a tree while intoxicated, remaining largely uninjured but landing himself in jail for the time being, mostly because he'd tried to fight the cops who came to help him. Roxas Tomianson wanted to be an architect and had been saving money for community college classes. Roxas Tomianson had three best friends from grade school, Hayner, Pence, and Olette, with whom he was still good friends. In short, Roxas Tomianson had a _life_.

After listening to this Roxas couldn't help but feel just a little bit like his head was about to implode. It sounded _vaguely_ familiar, but it was like listening to someone recite to him a summary of a dream he'd once had. He ran a hand through his hair, deliberately keeping his gaze averted from Hayner, Pence, and Olette. They kept looking at him like they expected him to jump up off of the bed and exclaim that yes, of course he remembered now, and then they'd all go get ice cream and ride ponies into the sunset, wearing matching Best Friends Forever bracelets.

It was ludicrous. How was he supposed to just take their word for it that he was this _person_, this Other Roxas?

And yet…

Roxas knotted his hand in his hair, tugging at the roots in frustration. There were _pictures_. There were the weird dream-memory-things. There was a vague but certain knowledge somewhere within him that he had lived in this town – in that house – and that he'd had friends in this town. It made sense. Logically, it made sense. The problem wasn't exactly to do with logic; it was more to do with the burning ache in his chest and the overwhelming desire he had to run straight back to Axel's house, where at least things were more or less simple.

"Roxas?" Olette said gently, her hand brushing against his arm like she wanted to comfort him but was afraid to actually touch him. Like he was some feral animal she didn't want to spook.

He looked up, and she smiled sympathetically. "You're really pale," she said. "Is there anything I can –"

"What happened to my mom?" Roxas interrupted, his words sharper and colder than he'd meant them to be. In fact he hadn't meant to say them at all; they just forced their way out. But this was important. If they could explain this then maybe – maybe he could accept the rest of it or at least try to. He swallowed and softened his voice. "I know she's – dead. I know that. What happened? Was it – him? Something to do with him?"

Olette had gone pale now, too. "Oh, Roxas," she said quietly. "I'm sorry."

"What?" he demanded, feeling a little bit panicky under the deeply worried looks they were all giving him.

"Your mom was…" Hayner started. "Rox, your mom, she…" He shook his head, apparently unable to continue.

Pence cleared his throat and spoke slowly, reluctantly. "She overdosed. On heroin. It was – it was in the paper. It happened right before your dad – uh, you know. Before that."

Roxas remained very still for a moment, staring at Pence. Then he slid his legs over the side of the bed and started to stand.

"Don't – !" Olette warned, but it was a second too late. Roxas nearly cried out at the stabbing pain in his ankle, staring down at his leg in utter bafflement.

"You twisted your ankle when I was trying to get you to Olette's," Hayner said, looking guilt-stricken as Roxas, wincing, braced himself against the wall. "I didn't have a car and Olette's house was closest so I thought we could make it… And I didn't mean to hurt you or anything but – you kept slipping in and out, man, you were just _gone_ one minute and then the next you were all _fighting_ me and shit and meanwhile I'm trying to drag you along and..." He sounded shaken and more than a little accusing. "And you _scared_ me."

"Oh, I deeply apologize," Roxas said bitterly, unable to help himself. He was just too tired, tired of being lost, tired of being in pain, tired of being tired. "I didn't mean to _scare_ you or anything. I was just a little bit busy having, I don't know, some sort of psychological meltdown, probably due to the fact that my mom's a dead junkie and my dad's a drunken convict who apparently, if these irritatingly persistent nightmare visions are trustworthy, had a habit of slicing me up with broken beer bottles – but you're right, I really should've been more considerate of your feelings at the time despite the fact that _I still don't really know who you are._"

Roxas stopped, aware of an abrupt shift in the already uncomfortable atmosphere of the room. He surveyed The Other Roxas's friends. Hayner's eyes had gone very, very wide. Olette was now nearly as pale as the snow visible outside her bedroom window. Pence could've been pictured next to the dictionary definition of the word "horrified." Not quite the proper reaction to mild verbal abuse.

"What?" Roxas said, his anger temporarily washed over by confusion.

"We didn't know," Pence said weakly, at last.

"Didn't know what?"

When Olette spoke it was in nearly a whisper. "That your dad was hurting you."

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"I have cats," Axel announced to Namine's quiet kitchen, standing over the counter and sipping his third mug of coffee slowly. His foot tapped erratically against the tile floor. "Hungry cats. Extremely hungry. Famished, probably. Hungry, hungry cats. Do you know how dangerous a hungry cat is, let alone three of them? By now they're probably terrorizing the entire town. The carnage will be devastating. I'll have to hire one of those constructiony guys with the things – the bulldozer sort of things except they have shovels on the front? – one of those things, to get rid of the carnage. Devastating. Namine. Listen to me. You're my friend, you have to."

"Unfortunately I_ am_ listening to you," Namine said dryly from her seat at the kitchen table. She'd just hung up with Kairi, who hadn't been much help but had promised to keep an eye out for blond spikes. "And as I've told you twelve hundred times already, it's better for your cats to go hungry one night than for you to kill yourself on those roads and leave them with no home. We have a severe winter storm warning according to the news and you're a terrible driver and – _will_ _you sit down?_" she snapped as he started striding toward the front door for the billionth time. "I swear I'll chain you to the couch if I have to."

Axel paused to grin and raise his eyebrows at her. "Kinky."

Namine dropped her face to her hands. "Oh my god, why did I caffeinate you?" she said, voice muffled through her fingers.

"Because I need it," Axel said, shoulders drooping, suddenly looking mournful. "Because I'm all alone and Roxas ran away and he hates me probably and I don't have a life and I'm becoming a crazy cat lady-man and/or kidnapper of amnesiacs and I have deep horrible emotional issues and I can never be a normal person and no one will ever love me and I should just go out there and build an igloo because what's the point anyway, and speaking of igloos I've been thinking lately, where do the ducks go in winter when the pond freezes ov –"

"Oh my god," Namine repeated, lifting her head to fix him with a glare of epic proportions. Well, not really, but it was a pretty bad glare. "You're quoting Holden Caulfield now? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"My misery comes in stages," Axel informed her with a woebegone stare. "This is the _Catcher in the Rye_ stage."

"No, this is the Babbling Incoherently But Even More Than Usual Stage," Namine sighed. "Don't try to tell me how your stages work. I know all your stages. The next one is –"

"Namine," Axel interrupted, suddenly deflating, a knot of anxiety tangling in his chest. "Namine, I'm a complete failure."

"…The 'I'm A Complete Failure' stage," Namine said, so quietly that Axel just barely caught her words. "No, Axel," she said more loudly. "You're not. You're a successful freelance artist. You're doing the best you can with the life you have, and that's all. You know that."

"That's not enough," Axel muttered, a rare shadow of solemnity falling over him. "You remember what I said to you when we met?"

"'Sorry, I didn't mean to hit you in the face with my elbow, I'm just freakishly tall and clumsy?'" Namine suggested.

"No. Later than that. I said I wanted to work for Disney."

"Yes, you did," Namine said cautiously. He could tell she was watching him closely, unsure whether or not to allow this line of conversation to continue.

"Isa wanted me to work for Disney," Axel said, after a pause, feeling the usual sickening of his stomach that came with any mention of Isa's name. He stared out the kitchen window at the blur of snow still falling.

"Isa wanted you to do what made you happy," Namine said, speaking slowly and carefully. "If being a garbage collector was what you'd wanted, he'd have wanted you to be a garbage collector."

"Yeah, but –"

"Axel," Namine said calmly. "You're not happy."

He stared at her for a long moment. "No," he said finally. He'd never actually thought of it in those terms, oddly enough. It seemed so obvious but – no, he'd never thought of it like that at all. "Not…usually. But – Roxas…"

"Makes you happy."

"Yeah."

She sighed. "Okay."

He blinked. "What?"

"I said okay. It's okay. It's not going to be perfect and you can't just assume he's going to make everything all better. Maybe he's going to go back to his life and it won't work out. But it's okay for you to at least try to stay in contact," Namine said, looking thoughtful and gazing past him toward the window. "Or at least get closure. If we haven't heard from him before the weather lets up, I'll drive you down to Twilight Hollow."

Axel stared at her for a moment, then glanced outside to make sure fire and brimstone wasn't falling from the sky or anything. Nope. Still snow. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Namine. "And you've suddenly decided to support my pseudo-relationship with an amnesiac because…?"

"Because he makes you happy. And, as you so helpfully keep reminding me, I'm supposed to be your friend."

Axel scoffed. "Sentimental bullshit. Not buying it."

Namine tilted her head to study him. "Axel, you haven't brought up working for Disney in forever. You haven't really particularly wanted to leave your _house_ in forever. You're…different. At first I thought it was just obsession or something, but I think this might be a good thing for you."

"Thanks, Namine," Axel said after a brief pause. "You know, for carefully considering and approving each and every one of my life choices before you allow me to actually make them. That's really –"

"The Sarcasm Stage," Namine muttered. "Fantastic."

"You know who's sarcastic? _Roxas_ is sarcastic," Axel said tragically, once more enveloped by an overwhelming sorrow. "Roxas is probably being sarcastic somewhere _right now_. All alone in the _cold_. Or maybe not alone, that would be weird because he'd be talking to himself, but I guess he could be sarcastic in his head, so…"

"Great. Now you're mixing stages." Namine stood up and took the half-full coffee mug forcibly from his hands, ignoring his growl of outrage as she poured it into the sink.

"You know who likes coffee?" Axel said after a few seconds of quiet. "_Roxas_ likes coffee."

Namine's eye actually appeared to twitch slightly, which was a new and fantastically amusing development. "I changed my mind," she said. "Roxas is terrible for you."

"You know who changes his mind?" Axel responded. "_Roxas_ –"

"_Shut. Up."_

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Roxas sat alone in Olette's room, where The Other Roxas's friends had left him to change into some clothes that weren't soaked from snow or covered in grit from an abandoned house. Apparently the clothes belonged to Olette's older brother, Seifer, who was at work. Hayner had made a face at the mention of Seifer's name, but Roxas of course had no recollection.

"We hate him," Hayner had informed Roxas, upon noticing his lack of reaction. "Just so y'know."

"Noted," Roxas had replied wryly as Pence and Olette rolled their eyes at each other. Olette was still pale – in fact all of them were still displaying the symptoms of a bad shock as they left the room.

In retrospect, Roxas thought as he folded Axel's coat, perhaps he hadn't responded all that well to their concerns. "Oh, don't worry, I had no idea my dad was hurting me until today either. You know. Because of the traumatic flashback. Did I mention I've been told that I'm probably experiencing a dissociative fugue? That's pretty much amnesia by the way. I may never remember you! Weird, huh?"

Not exactly all that consoling.

He sighed and tugged his shirt up over his head, wincing when the material rubbed against new bruises. Shivering, he went to undo his belt and stopped when his fingers brushed something in the pocket of his jeans.

It was the cell phone Axel had bought for him after he'd gotten lost. That felt like years ago now. He'd shoved it in his pocket purely out of habit. His heart pounded as he hit the power button and turned the phone over in his hands, examining it closely as though he'd never really seen it before. He thought about how he'd felt not that long ago, drowsing on Axel's couch after their date, reaching down to hold Axel's hand even though it wasn't all that comfortable – how he'd felt safe, and warm, and like he fit somewhere, even if that somewhere was just somebody's couch.

Roxas took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He found Axel's name in the phone's contacts list – not difficult, as it was the only name there – and hit the call button.

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Notes: Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it and I'd love to hear from you regardless, so feel free to leave a review. Stay tuned for Chapter Ten in which Axel gets a phone call! (Who could it _possibly_ be?)


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